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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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J UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ 



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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 

A STORY OF THE GREAT REVIVAL OF 1875 
IN NEW YORK. 



§tiig's §rigW f trra : anir ®%r goto, 

1 vol. i2mo. Extra Cloth, beveled, 75 cts. ; 
Illuminated Paper Covers, 30 cts. 



" The hand that permed them 
has not lost it cunning." — Cincin- 
nati Times. 

k ' Ably constructed and well- 
written, with a sympathy and 
pathos that touch the best feelings 
of human nature deeply. . . . 
Mrs. Stowe is conspicuous among 



among those writers of fiction who, 
without cant and without preach- 
ing, and never failing to make all 
their stories excellent as works of 
art, contrive that they shall be 
instructive andinvigoratingto the 
moral and religious principles."— 
Illustrated Christian Weekly. 



COPYRIGHT, 1876, J. B. FORD & COMPANY. 




fyaatittp 0f % |||Wn" 



" I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of; and wherever I have 
seen the print of his shoe in the earth, there have I coveted to set my 

foot too." 

— Mr. Standfast' 's dying words. 
Pilgrim's Progress. 



.y 



Harriet Beecher Stowe 

11 





NEW YORK 

J. B. FORD & COMPANY 
1877 






?7 





HEN a city is closely beseiged and many of 
its outworks destroyed, the defenders retreat to 
the citadel. In our day there is warm fight- 
ing about the outworks of Christianity. Many things 
are battered down that used to be thought indispensa- 
ble to its defence. It is time to retreat to the citadel ; 
and that citadel is Christ. 

The old mediaeval symbol shown above is still more 
than ever good for our day. Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
is still our King, our Light, our Law, our Leader. 
These names comprise all that a human being needs 
in this transitory, perplexing and dangerous pilgrimage 
of life. 

We are born to suffer. The very conditions of our 
mortal existence here imply suffering of the most ter- 
rible kind as a possibility, a probability or a certainty. 
We have affections absorbing our whole being which 
are hourly menaced by danger and by death — at any 
moment cur sweetest joys may become sources only 
of bitterest remembrance. 

9 



io FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

We are born to perplexity. We stand amid the jar 
and conflict of a thousand natural laws, to us inexpli- 
cable, and which every hour threaten us in ourselves 
or those dearer than ourselves. We stand often in 
no less perplexity of moral law in ways where the 
path of duty and right is darkened and beset. 

We are born to die. At the end of every possible 
road of life lies the dark River — the unknown future. 
If we cling to life, it is only to see it wither gradually 
in our hands, to see friends dropping from our side, 
places vacant at our fireside, infirmities and pains 
gathering about us, and a new generation with their 
impetuous energies rising around us to say, Why do 
you wait here ? Why are you not gone ? 

And the Hereafter ? What is it ? Who will go with 
us into that future where no friend, however dear, 
can accompany the soul? What hand of power and 
love will take ours in the last darkness, when we have 
let go all others ? 

The dear old book which we call the Bible gives our 
answer to all this. It tells us of a Being so one with 
the great Author of nature and Source of all power that 
whoso hath seen him hath seen the Creator. It tells 
us that all things that we behold in our material world 
were made by him and for him ; that it pleased the 
Father that in him should all fullness dwell, and that 
to him all things in heaven and on earth are made 
subject. It shows him to us from the beginning of 
time as constantly absorbed in the care and education 
of this world of ours. He has been the Desire of all 
nations — predicted, waited for, come at last ! 



TO THE READER. n 

And when he came and lived a mortal life what did 
he show the divine nature to be ? It may all be told 
in one word : — 

Love, unconquered, unconquerable by human sin and 
waywardness. Love, sympathetic with the inevitable 
sorrows of human existence. Love, expressed in every 
form by which a God could express love. His touch 
was healing ; the very hem of his garment had restoring 
virtue. He lived and loved as we live and love, only 
on a higher ideal — he gave to every human affection a 
more complete interpretation, a more perfect fullness. 
And finally, as the highest revelation of Love, he died 
for us, and in anguish and blood and dying pains still 
loved, still prayed for us, the ungrateful race of man. 
He passed through the night of death that he might 
learn not to fear it, and came forth radiant and immortal 
to tell us that we shall never die. 

By a refinement of infinite mercy, the law of our 
lives is written not in hard statutes but in the life of 
this tender and sympathetic friend. Christ is our law. 
We learn courage, patience, fortitude, forgiving love 
from him. The lesson impossible in statute is made 
easy by sympathy. But lest the very brightness of 
the ideal fill us with despair we have his promise, 
" Lo, / am with you alway to the end of the world ! 
I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you." 
Jesus, as an inseparable soul-friend — a consoler, a 
teacher, an enlightener — dwells on earth now in a 
higher sense than when he walked the hills of Pal- 
estine. 



12 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

" For ever more beside us on our way, 
The unseen Christ doth move, 
That we may lean upon his arm and say, 
' Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?' " 

To that great multitude whom no man can number, 
who are living the hidden life of faith, these studies 
into the life of our Master are dedicated. They have 
been arranged in the order of the seasons of the Chris- 
tian year, with the hope of aiding the efforts of those 
who wish at these sacred seasons to bring our Lord 
more clearly to mind. 

We hear much of modern skepticism. There is, per- 
haps, no more in the world now than there has always 
been, only its forms are changed. Its answer lies 
not in argument, but in the lives of Christ's followers. 
It was Christians who lived like Christ that won the 
first battle for Christianity, and it must be Christians 
who live like Christ that shall win the last. The life 
of faith in the Son of God, when fully lived out, 
always has been and always will be a victorious argu- 
ment. 

But to live this our faith must be firm. We cannot 
meet a skeptical world with weak faith. If we would 
draw our friend out of a swift-rushing current, our own 
feet must not stand on slippery places. We must seek 
faith in looking to Him who has the giving of it. We 
must keep Him before our minds, and come so near 
Him in daily prayer that we can say: "That which we 
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon 
and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life, de- 
clare we unto you." 

And even to those who have no conscious belief in 



TO THE READER. 1 3 

Christ, his name can never be a matter of indifference. 
Whether they believe it or not, Christ stands to them in 
a peculiar relation that no other being holds. He is 
their best Friend, the Shepherd that is seeking them, 
the generous Saviour and Giver that is longing to save 
them from all that they fear and to give exceeding 
abundantly beyond all they can ask or think. 




Cable '(rf Cmttotls. 



Rex, Lux, Lex, Dux, 



PAGE 

9 



Hymn — " World Redeemer, 1 ' .... 19 

James Freeman Clarke, from the German of De Wette. 



i,Mwit. 



I. Christ in the Old Testament, 

" The Soul's Conflict, 1 ' . 

Charles Wesley. 

II. Christ in Prophecy* 



21 

33 

35 



€§xwtmHn. 





"Ancient Christmas Ballad," . 


. 49 


III. 


The Cradle of Bethlehem, .... 


. 5i 




" Christmas Morning Hymn," 


. 61 




C. J. Black. 




IV. 


The Blessed Woman, ..... 


• 63 




" Cradle Song of the Blessed Virgin," 


. 75 




From the Latin. 




V. 


The Holy Childhood, 


. 77 




" Shepherds' Carol," ..... 


. 83 




H. B. S. 





15 



i6 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



%ip&anjj. 



PAGE 

85 



VI. Gentile Prophecies of Christ, . 

" The Charmer," . . . ... . -95 

H. B. S. 

VII. The Hidden Years of Christ, .... 97 

" The Fainting Disciple," . . . . . 103 
John Keble. 



tint. 



VIII. 



IX, 



X. 

XL 



XII. 
XIII. 

XIV. 

^xv. 



XVI. 



The Prayer-Life of Jesus, 

" Christ's Call to Retirement," 
H B. S. 

The Temptations of Jesus, . 

Hymn — " Looking tin to Jesus," 
John Newton. 

Our Lord's Bible, . ' . 

Christ's First Sermon, 

Hymn — " O Love Divine," . 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, 

The Friendships of Jesus, . 
Christ's Unworldly Methods, 
Christ and the Fallen Woman, 
Christ, the Revealer of God's Symp, 

Hymn — "When gath'ring clouds around I view, 
Sir Robert Grant. 
The Attractiveness of Jesus, 
Hymn — " Love for Love," . 

St. Francis Xavier. 



105 
ill 

113 
119 

121 

127 
132 

133 
143 

148 

159 
174 

176 

187 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 17 

PAGE 

XVII. The Tolerance of Jesus, . . . . . 188 

" Let not your heart be troubled," . . , 193 
F. W. Faber. 

XVIII. The Silence of Jesus, 195 

XIX. The Secret of Peace, ..... 201 

XX. The Church of the Master, .... 208 

" Christ's Love," ...... 224 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 

XXI. Judas, . . . . 225 



$ assiflit fflkek. 



Hymn — " The Heart of Jesus," . . . 233 

William Cowfier. 

XXII. Going up to Jerusalem, 234 

" Palm Sunday," ...... 241 

John Keble. 

XXIII. The Barren Fig Tree, 242 

" Too Late !"....... 247 ' 

Alfred Tennyson. 

XXIV. Caiaphas, , . 248 

" Mary at the Cross," 253 

H. B. S. 

XXV. The Joy of Christ 256 

Hymn — "The Divine Friend," . . . 260 

Baptist Noel. 

XXVI. Gethsemane, 261 

" Prayer of the Afflicted," .... 267 

John Neale. 
" Bearing the Cross," ..... 269 
H B. S. 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



PAGE 

XXVII. The Last Words of Jesus, . . . .271 

Hymn — " The Cross of Christ," „ . .277 

Paul Gerhardt. 

XXVIII. The Darkest Hour, ...... 279 

" The Unknown Friend," ..... 283 
William Cozvper. 



XXIX. The Resurrection of Jesus, .... 285 

Hymn — " The First Day of the Week." . . 292 
Thomas Hastings. 



%8tmBwn, 



XXX. The Ascension of our Lord, . - . . 293 

" Ascension," . . . . . . . 295 

F. W. Faber. 

XXXI. The Holy Spirit, . . . . - . 296 

" Descent of the Spirit," ..... 299 
F. W. Faber. 

XXXII. Second Life of Christ, in his Followers, . 300 




limn. 




ORLD Redeemer ! Lord of Glory! 
As of old to zealous Paul 
Thou didst come in sudden splendor 
And from out the clouds didst call ; 
As to Mary in the garden 

Did thy risen form appear — ■ 
Come, arrayed in heavenly beauty, 
Come and speak, and I will hear. 

Hast thou not," the Master answered, 
" Hast thou not my written word ? 
Hast thou not, to go before thee, 

The example of thy Lord ? " 
Blessed One ! thy word of wisdom 

Is too high for me to know ; • 
And my feet are all too feeble 

For the path where Thou didst go. 



Doubts torment me while I study ; 

All my reading and my thinking 
Lead away from firm conviction, 

And in mire my feet are sinking. 
Then I turn to works of duty : 

Here thy law is very plain, 
But I look at thy example, — 

Strive to follow, strive in vain. 
19 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



Let me gaze then at thy glory ; 

Change to flesh this heart of stone ! 
Let that light illume my darkness 

That around the apostle shone. 
Cold belief is not conviction ; 

Rules are impotent to move : 
Let me see thy heavenly beauty; 

Let me learn to trust and love. 

In my heart the voice made answer: 
" Ask not for a sign from Heaven ; 
In the gospel of thy Saviour 

Life as well as light is given. 
Ever looking unto Jesus, 

All his glory thou shalt see. 
From thy heart the vail be taken, 

And the word made clear to thee. 

' ' Love the Lord, and thou shalt see Him ; 

Do His will, and thou shalt know 
How the Spirit lights the letter, — 

How a little child may go 
Where the wise and prudent stumble : — 

How a heavenly glory shines 
In his acts of love and mercy 

From the gospel's simplest lines.'* 

— Translation of 'Rev. J as. Freeman Clarke 
from German of Dr. Wm. M. L. de Wette. 




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begotten not mabe, fojjo for na nun anb for our saturation 
tame baton from f eaoen, anb km intarnat* bg t\t Jtolg 
#feo$t of % Virgin parg, anb foas mabe man." 



"Whose goings forth have been of old; even from 
everlasting." 



I. 



Cjjrist h \\t #Ur Cwtament. 



THE LAMB SLAIN FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD. 



UR Lord asserts nothing more frequently than 
that he came to this world, not as other men 
come, but as a voluntary exile from a higher 
and purer life. He said in public, speaking to the 
Jews, " I came down from heaven, not to do my own 
will, but the will of him that sent me." When the 
Jews tauntingly said to him, " Thou art not yet fifty 
years old, and hast thou seen Abraham ?'" he answered, 
"Before Abraham was, I am." In fact, while he walked 
as a brother among men, there were constant and mys- 
terious flashes from the life of a higher sphere. Jesus 
moved about in our life as a sympathetic foreigner 
who ever and anon in moments of high excitement 
breaks out into his native language. So Christ at 
times rose into the language of heaven, and spoke for 
a moment, unconsciously, as it were, in the style of a 
higher world. 

He did not say, "Before Abraham was, I was," but 
" I am," using the same form which in the Old Testa- 
ment is used by Jehovah when he declares his name 



2 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

to Moses, "I am that I am." So, too, when con- 
versing with Nicodemus, our Lord' asserts that he is 
the only person competent to bear testimony to heav- 
enly things, because he came from heaven. 

He says, " No man hath ascended into heaven but 
he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man 
which is in heaven." This last is one of those changes 
into the language of a higher world which so often 
awed and perplexed those who talked with Jesus. It 
would seem that he had the power by moments to 
breathe aside the veil which separates from the higher 
state, and to be in heaven. Such a moment was this, 
when, he was declaring to an honest-minded, thoughtful 
inquirer the higher truths of the spiritual life, and assert- 
ing his right to know about heavenly things, because 
he came down from heaven — yea, because for the mo- 
ment he was in heaven. 

But in the last hours of his life, when he felt the 
scenes of his humiliations and sufferings approaching, 
he declared this truth, so often shadowed and intimated, 
with explicit plainness. He said, " I came forth from 
the Father, and am come into the world. Again, I leave 
the world, and go to the Father." This was stating 
the truth as plainly as human words can do it, and the 
disciples at last understood him fully. " Lo ! now 
speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb." And 
in that affecting prayer that followed our Lord breathes • 
the language of an exile longing to return to the home 
of his love : " And now, O Father ! glorify me with 
thine own self — with the glory that I had with thee 
before the world was." 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 23 

It is then most plain on the face of the New Testa- 
ment that our Lord had a history before he came to 
this world. He was a living power. He was, as he 
says, in glory with the Father before the world was. 
Are there any traces of this mysterious Word, this 
Divine Son, this Revealer of God in the Old Testa- 
ment ? It has been the approved sentiment of sound 
theologians that in the Old Testament every visible 
appearance of an Angel or divine Man to whom the 
name of Jehovah is given is a pre-appearance of the 
Redeemer, Jesus. It is a most interesting study to 
pursue this idea through the Old Testament history, 
as is fully done by President Edwards in his History 
of Redemption and by Dr. Watts in his True Glory of 
Christ. In Milton's Paradise Lost he represents the 
Son of God as being " the Lord God who walked in 
the Garden of Eden " after the trespass of our first 
parents, and dwells on the tenderness of the idea that 
it was in the cool of the day, 

" when from wi;ath more cool 

Came the mild Judge and Intercessor both." 

This sentiment of the church has arisen from the 
plain declaration in the first chapter of John, where 
it is plainly asserted that "no man hath seen God at 
any time, but the only-begotten Son, which is in the 
bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." The 
Old Testament records to which our Lord constantly 
appealed were full of instances in which a being called 
Jehovah, and spoken of as God, — the Almighty God, — 
had appeared to men, and the inference is plain that 
all these were pre-appearances of Christ. 



24 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

It is an interesting study for the sacred season of 
Advent to trace those pre-appearances of our Lord and 
Saviour in the advancing history of our race. A series 
of readings of this sort would be a fit preparation for 
the triumphs of Christmas, when he, the long-desired, 
was at last given visible to man. 

We shall follow a few of these early appearances of 
the Saviour, in the hope that some pious hearts may 
be led to see those traces of his sacred foosteps, which 
brighten the rugged ways of the Old Testament history. 

In the eighteenth chapter of Genesis we have an 
account of a long interview of Abraham with a being 
in human form, whom he addresses as Jehovah, the 
Judge of all the earth. We hear him plead with him 
in words like these : 

" Behold now, I have taken on me to speak unto Jehovah, which 
am but dust and ashes . . . that be far from thee to do after 
this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked : and that the 
righteous should be as the wicked. Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right?" 

What a divine reticence and composure it was, on the 
part of our Lord, when afterwards he came to earth and 
the scoffing Jews said to him, " Thou art not yet fifty 
years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" He did not 
tell them how their father Abraham had been a sup- 
pliant at his feet ages ago, yet he must have thought 
of it as they thus taunted him. 

Again we read in Genesis xxviii., when Jacob left his 
father's house and lay down, a lonely traveler, in the 
fields with a stone for his pillow, the pitying Jesus 
appeared to him. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 25 

" He dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
top of it reached unto heaven ; and behold the angels of God as- 
cending and descending upon it. And behold, Jehovah stood above 
it, and said, I am Jehovah, God of Abraham, thy father." 

As afterwards Jesus, at the well of Samaria, chose to 
disclose his Messiahship to the vain, light-minded, guilty 
Samaritan woman, and call her to be a messenger of 
his good to her townsmen, so now he chose Jacob — 
of whom the worst we know is that he had yielded to 
an unworthy plot for deceiving his father — he chose 
him to be the father of a powerful nation. Afterward 
our Lord alludes to this vision in one of his first con- 
versations with Nathaniel, as given by St. John : 

" Jesus said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under 
the fig-tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. 
Verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open and the 
angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." 

This same divine Patron and Presence watches over 
the frieudless Jacob until he becomes rich and powerful, 
the fr.ther of a numerous tribe. He is returning with 
his v lole caravan to his native land. But the conse- 
quence of his former sin meets him on the way. Esau, 
the brother whom he deceived and overreached, is a 
powerful prince, and comes to meet him with a band 
of men. 

Then Jacob was afraid and distressed, and applies 
at once to his heavenly Helper. " I am not worthy," 
he says, " of all the mercy and all the truth which 
thou hast shown to thy servant, for with my staff I 
passed over this Jordan and now I am become two 
bands. Deliver me, I pray thee, from the hand of my 
brother Esau, for I fear him, lest he come and smite 



26 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



me and the mother with the children." Such things 
were common in those days — they were possible and 
too probable — and what father would not pray as Jacob 
prayed ? 

Then follows a passage of singular and thrilling 
character. A mysterious stranger comes to him, dimly 
seen in the shadows of the coming dawn. Is it that 
human Friend — that divine Jehovah? Trembling and 
hoping he strives to detain him, but the stranger seeks 
to flee from him. Made desperate by the agony of 
fear and entreaty, he throws his arms around him and 
seeks to hold him. The story is told briefly thus : 

" And Jacob was left alone. And there wrestled A MAN with 
him until the breaking of day. And when he saw that he prevailed 
not he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob's 
thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him. And the man said, 
Let me go, for the day breaketh ; and he said, I will not let thee go 
except thou bless me. And he said, What is thy name ? and he 
said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, 
but Israel : for as a prince thou hast power with God and with men, 
and hast prevailed. And Jacob said, I beseech thee tell me thy 
name. And he said Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my 
name? And he blessed him there." 

How like is this mysterious stranger to the One in 
the New Testament history who afrer the resurrection 
joined the two sorrowful disciples on the way to Em- 
maus. There is the same mystery, the same reserve in 
giving himself fully to the trembling human beings who 
clung to him. So when the disciples came to their 
abode " He made as though he would go farther," and 
they constrained him and he went in. As he breaks 
the bread they know Him, and immediately he vanishes 
out of their sight. 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 27 

In his dying hour (Gen. xlviii.) the patriarch Jacob, 
after an earthly pilgrimage of a hundred and forty-seven 
years, recalls these blessed visions of his God: 

"And Jacob said to Joseph, God Almighty appeared to me at Luz 
in the land of Canaan and blessed me,' 1 

And again, blessing the children of Joseph, he says, 

"God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the 
.God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which 
redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." 

Bat it was not merely to the chosen father of the 
chosen nation that this pitying Friend and Saviour 
appeared. When the poor, passionate, desperate slave- 
girl Hagar was wandering in the wilderness, struggling 
with the pride and passion of her unsubdued nature, 
He who follows the one wandering sheep appeared 
and spoke to her (Genesis xvi.). He reproved her 
passionate impatience ; he counseled submission ; he 
promised his protection and care to the son that should 
be born of her and the race that should spring from 
her. Wild and turbulent that race of men should be ; 
and yet there was to be a Saviour, a Care-taker, a 
Shepherd for them. " And she called the name of 
the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me ; 
for she said, Have I also here looked after him that 
seeth me?" 

Afterwards, when the fiery, indomitable passions of 
the slave-woman again break forth and threaten the 
peace of the home, and she is sent forth into the wil- 
derness, the Good Shepherd again appears to her. 
Thus is the story told (Genesis xxi.) : 

" And the water was spent in the bottle, and she cast the child 



28 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

under one of the shrubs, and she went and sat down a good way 
off, for she said, Let me not see the death of the child. And God 
heard the voice of the lad, and the angel of the Lord called to 
Hagar out of Heaven, saying, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not. 
God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the 
lad, hold him in thy hand, for I will make of him a great nation. 
And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water.'' 

Thus did he declare himself the Care-taker and 
Saviour not of the Jews merely, but of the Gentiles. 
It was he who afterwards declared that he was the 
living bread which came down from Heaven, which 
he gave for the life of the whole world. 

Afterwards, in the history of Moses in the wilderness 
of Sinai, we read of a Divine Being who talked with 
him in a visible intimacy. 

".And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the 
cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and 
Jehovah talked with Moses. And all the people saw the cloudy 
pillar stand at the tabernacle door, and all the people rose up and 
worshiped, each man in his tent door. And yehovah spake unto 
Moses, face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend!' 

Some record of this strange conversation is given. 
Moses was a man of wonderful soul, in whom was 
the Divine yearning; he longed to know more and 
more of his God, and at last beseeches to have the 
full beatific vision of the Divine nature in its glory; 
but the answer is : " Thou canst not see my face [in 
its Divine glory], for there shall no man see me 
and live." That overpowering vision was not for flesh 
and blood ; it would dissolve the frail bonds of mor- 
tality and set the soul free, and Moses must yet live, 
and labor, and suffer. 

What an affecting light this interview of Moses 



CHRIST IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 29 

sheds on that scene in the New Testament, where, just 
before his crucifixion, the disciples see their Master in 
the glory of the heavenly world, and with him Moses 
and Elijah, " who spake with him of* his decease, 
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem," — Moses, 
who had been taught by the Divine Word in the wil- 
derness how to organize all that system of forms and 
sacrifices which were to foreshadow and prepare the 
way for the great Sacrifice — the great Revealer of God 
to man. We see these noble souls, the two grandest 
prophets of the Old Testament, in communion with 
our Lord about that last and final sacrifice which was 
to fulfill and bring to an end all others. 

A little later on, in the Old Testament history, we 
come to a time recorded in the Book of Judges when 
the chosen people, settled in the land of Canaan, sunk 
in worldliness and sin, have forgotten the Lord Jeho- 
vah, and as a punishment are left to be bitterly op- 
pressed and harassed by the savage tribes in their 
neighborhood. The nation was in danger of extinc- 
tion. The stock from which was to come prophets 
and apostles, the writers of the Bible which we now 
read, from which was to come our Lord Jesus Christ, 
was in danger of being trampled out under the heel 
of barbarous heathen tribes. It was a crisis needing 
a deliverer. Physical strength, brute force, was the 
law of the day, and a deliverer was to be given who 
could overcome force by superior force. 

Again the mysterious Stranger appears ; we have the 
account in Judges xiii. 

A pious old couple who have lived childless hitherto 



30 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

receive an angelic visitor who announces to them the 
birth of a deliverer. And the woman came and told her 
husband, saying, " A man of God came unto me, and his 
countenance was like the countenance of an angel of 
God, very terrible ; but I asked him not whence he was, 
neither told he me his name." This man, she goes on 
to say, had promised a son to them who should deliver 
Israel from the hand of the Philistines. Manoah then 
prays to God to grant another interview with the 
heavenly messenger. 

The prayer is heard; the divine Man again appears 
to them and gives directions for the care of the future 
child, — directions requiring the most perfect temperance 
and purity on the part of both mother and child. 
The rest of the story is better given in the quaint 
and beautiful words of the Bible: 

"And Manoah said to the angel of Jehovah, I pray thee let 
us detain thee till we shall have made ready a kid for thee. 
And the angel of Jehovah said to Manoah, Though thou detain 
me I will not eat of thy bread ; and if thou wilt offer a burnt 
offering thou must offer it unto Jehovah. For Manoah knew not 
that he was an angel of Jehovah. And Manoah said, "What is thy 
name? that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor. 
And the Angel of the Lord said unto him, Why askest thou my name, 
seeing that it is secret ? So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering 
and offered it upon a rock to the Lord ; and the angel did wonder- 
ously, and Manoah and his wife looked on. For it came to pass, 
when the flame went up to heaven from off the altar, that the angel 
of Jehovah ascended in the flame on the altar, and Manoah and his 
wife fell on their faces on the ground. And Manoah said, We shall 
surely die, for we have seen God." 

This tender, guiding Power, this long-suffering and 
pitying Saviour of Israel, appears to us in frequent 
glimpses through the writings of the prophets. 



CHRIST IN THE OID TESTAMENT. 31 

Isaiah says, " In all their affliction He was afflicted, 
and the Angel of his Presence saved them ; in his love 
and his pity he redeemed them, and he bore and car- 
ried them all the days of old." 

It is this thought that gives an inexpressible pathos 
to the rejection of Christ by the Jews. St. John 
begins his gospel by speaking of this Divine Word, 
who was with God in the beginning, and was God; 
/hat he was in the world, and the world was made by 
him, and the world knew him not. He came unto 
his own, and his own received him not. 

This gives an awful, pathetic meaning to those tears 
which Christ shed over Jerusalem, and to that last 
yearning farewell to the doomed city: 

"O .Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and 
stonest them that are sent unto thee ; how cf;en would I have 
gathered thy children as a hen doth gather her brood under her 
wings, and ye would not." 

It gives significance to that passage of Revelation 
where Christ is called " the Lamb slain from the foun- 
dation of the world." 

Not alone in the four years when he ministered on 
earth was he the suffering Redeemer; he was always, 
from the foundation of the world, the devoted sacrifice : 
bearing on his heart the sinning, suffering, wandering 
race of man, afflicted in their afflictions, bearing their 
griefs and carrying their sorrows, the friend of the 
Jew and the Gentile, the seeker for the outcast, the 
guide of the wanderer, the defender of the helpless, 
the consoler of the desolate, the self-devoted offering 
to and for the sins of the world. 



32 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

In all these revelations of God, one idea is very 
precious. He reveals himself not as a fixed Fate — a 
mighty, crushing, inexorable Power — but as a Being 
relenting, tender, yearning towards the race of man 
with infinite tenderness. He suffers himself to be im- 
portuned ; he hides himself that he may be sought, 
and, although he is omnipotent, though with one 
touch he might weaken and paralyze human strength, 
yet he suffers human arms to detain and human im- 
portunity to conquer him, and he blesses the man that 
will not let him go except he bless. On this scene 
Charles Wesley has written his beautiful hymn begin- 
ning, 

" Come, O thou Traveler unknown. " 

The struggles, the sorrows, and aspirations of the soul 
for an unknown Saviour have never been more beauti- 
fully told. 




€\t Soul's Conflict aitir f ktorg. 



Charles Wesley. 




OME, O thou Traveler unknown, 
Whom still I hold, but cannot see, 
My company before is gone, 
And I am left alone with thee ; 
With thee all night I mean to stay, 
And wrestle till the break of day. 

I need not tell thee who I am ; 

My sin and misery declare ; 
Thyself hast called me by my name ; 

Look on thy hands and read it there : 
But who, I ask thee, who art thou? 
Tell me thy name, and tell me now. 

In vain thou strugglest to be free ; 

I never will unloose my hold : 
Art thou the Man that died for me? 

The secret of thy love unfold ; 
Wrestling, I will not let thee go 
Till I thy name, thy nature know. 

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal 

Thy new, unutterable name? 
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell ; 

To know it now resolved I am ; 
33 



34 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Wrestling, I will not let thee go 
Till I thy name, thy nature know. 

What though my shrinking flesh complain 
• And murmur to contend so long? 

I rise superior to my pain : 

When I am weak, then am I strong ! 
And when my all of strength shall fail, 
I shall with the God-man prevail. 

Yield to me now, for I am weak, 

But confident in self-despair ; 
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak ; 

Be conquered by my instant prayer ; 
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move, 
And tell me if thy name be Love. 

'T is Love ! 't is Love ! Thou diedst for me 
I hear thy whisper in my heart ; 

The morning breaks, the shadows flee ; 
Pure, universal Love thou art : 

To me, to all, thy mercies move ; 

Thy nature and thy name is Love. 

My prayer hath power with God ; the grace 

Unspeakable I now receive ; 
Through faith I see thee face to face ; 

I see thee face to fare and live ! 
In vain I have not wept and strove ; 

Thy nature and thy name is Love. 

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art, — 
Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend ; 

Nor wilt thou with the night depart, 
But stay and love me to the end ; 
. Thy mercies never shall remove ; 

Thy nature and thy name is Love. 



II. 



Cijtist in Jrojrjfftj. 




N the Old Testament Scriptures we have from 
the beginning of the world an advent dawn — 
a rose sky of Promise. He is coming, is the 
mysterious voice that sounds everywhere, in history, 
in prophecy, in symbol, type and shadow. It spreads 
through all races of men ; it becomes an earnest 
aspiration, a sigh, a moan of struggling humanity, cry- 
ing out for its Unknown God. 

In the garden of Eden came the first oracle, which 
declared that the seed of the woman should bruise 
the serpent's head. This was an intimation, vague yet 
distinct, that there should come a Deliverer who 
should break the power of evil. From that hour 
every mother had hope, and child-bearing was invested 
with dignity and blessing. When the mother of all 
brought the first son into the world, she fondly hoped 
that she had brought forth the Deliverer, and said, " I 
have gotten the man Jehovah" 

Poor mother! destined to a bitter anguish of dis- 
appointment ! Thousands of years were to pass away 

35 



36 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

before the second Eve should bring forth the man 
Jehovah. 

In this earliest period we find in the history of Job 
the anguish, the perplexities, the despair of the help- 
less human creature, crushed and bleeding beneath 
the power of an unknown, mighty Being, whose ways 
seem cruel and inexplicable, but with whom he feels 
that expostulation is impossible. 

" Lo, he goeth by me and I see him not ; he passeth on also and I 
perceive him not. Behold, he taketh away, and who can hinder him ? 
who will say unto him, What doest thou ? If God will not with- 
draw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him. How then 
.shall I answer him and choose out words to reason with him?" 

Job admits that he desires to reason with God to 
ask some account of his ways. He says : 

"My soul is weary of my life. I will speak in the bitterness of 
my soul. I will say unto God, Do not condemn me ; show me why 
thou contendest with me. Is it good that thou shouldest oppress, 
that thou shouldest despise the work of thy hands ?'' 

He then goes through with all the perplexing mys- 
teries of life. He sees the wicked prosperous and suc- 
cessful, and he that had always been devoted to God 
reduced to the extreme of human misery; he wrestles 
with the problem; he longs to ask an explanation; 
but it all comes to one mournful conclusion : 

" He is not a man as I am, that I should answer him, and we 
should come together in judgment. Neither is there any daysman 
[arbiter] between us, that might lay his hand on both of us. Let 
him take his rod away and let not his fear terrify me. Then would 
I speak ; but it is not so with me." 

Here we have in a word the deepest want of 
humanity : a daysman between the infinite God and 
finite man ; a Mediator who should lay his hand on 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 37 

both of them ! And then, in the midst of these yearn- 
ings and complainings, the Spirit of God, the Heavenly 
Comforter, bearing witness with Job's spirit, breaks 
forth in the prophetic song: 

" I know that my Redeemer liveth 
And that he shall stand in the latter days upon the earth. 
And though worms destroy this body, 
Yet in my flesh shall I see God. 
I shall see him for myself and not another. 
My reins are consumed with longing for that day." 

As time passes we have the history of one man, 
called from all the races of men to be the ancestor of 
this Seed. Abraham, called to leave his native land 
and go forth sojourning as a pilgrim and stranger on 
earth, receives a celestial visitor who says : " Abraham, 
I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be 
thou perfect." He exacts of Abraham the extremes 
of devotion — not only to leave his country, kindred, 
friends, and be a sojourner in a strange land, but to 
sacrifice the only son of his heart. And Abraham 
meets the test without a wavering thought; his trust 
in God is absolute : and in return he receives the prom- 
ise, " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth 
be blessed." How Abraham looked upon this promise 
we are told by our Lord himself. The Jews asked 
him, "Art thou greater than our father Abraham?" 
And he answered, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to 
see my day — he saw it, and was glad." 

The same promise was repeated to Jacob in the 
self-same words, when he lay sleeping in the field of 
Luz and saw the heavenly vision of the Son of man. 

From the time of the first announcement to Abraham 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE. MASTER. 



his descendants became the recipients of a special 
divine training, in which every event of their history 
had a forelooking to this great consummation. They 
were taken into Egypt, and, after long suffering, 
delivered from a deadly oppression. In the solemn 
hour of their deliverance the blood of a spotless lamb 
— " a lamb without blemish " — was to mark the door- 
posts of each dwelling with a sign of redemption. 
"Not a bone of him shall be broken," said the 
ancient command, referring to this typical sacrifice; 
and when in a later day the apostle John stood by 
the cross of Jesus and saw them break the limbs of 
the other two victims and leave Jesus untouched, he 
said, " that it might be fulfilled which was commanded, 
not a bone of Him shall be broken." 

The yearly festival which commemorated this deliv- 
erance was a yearly prophecy in every Jewish family 
of the sinless Redeemer whose blood should be their 
salvation. A solemn ritual was instituted, every part 
of which was prophetic and symbolic. A high priest 
chosen from among his brethren, who could be touched 
with the feelings of their infirmities, was the only one 
allowed to enter that mysterious Holy of Holies where 
were the mercy-seat and the cherubim, the throne of 
the Invisible God. There, for -the most part, unbroken 
stillness and solitude reigned. Only on one memor- 
able day of the year, while all the congregation of 
Israel lay prostrate in penitence without, this high 
priest entered for them with the blood of atonement 
into the innermost presence of the King Invisible. 
Purified, arrayed in spotless garments, and bearing on 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 39 

his breast — graven on precious gems — the names of 
the tribes of Israel, he entered there, a yearly symbol 
and prophecy of the greater High Priest, who should 
"not by the blood of bulls and of goats, but by his 
own blood, enter at once into the holy place, having 
obtained eternal redemption for us." 

Thus, by a series of symbols and ceremonies which 
filled the entire life of the Jew, the whole national 
mind was turned in an attitude of expectancy towards 
the future Messiah. In the more elevated and spiritual 
natures — the poets and the prophets — this was con- 
tinually bursting forth into distinct predictions. Moses 
says, in his last message to Israel, " A prophet shall 
the Lord your God raise up unto you from the midst 
of your brethren like unto me ; unto Him shall ye 
hearken/' Our Lord referred to this prophecy when 
he said to the unbelieving Jews, " Had ye believed 
Moses ye would have believed me, for he wrote of 
me." 

The promise made at first to Abraham was after- 
wards repeated not only to Jacob, but long centuries 
afterward to his descendant, David, in a solemn, pro- 
phetic message, relating first to the reign of Solomon, 
but ending with these words : " And thy house and 
thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. 
Thy throne shall be established forever." That David 
understood these words as a promise that the Re- 
deemer should be of his seed is evident from the 
declaration of St. Peter in Acts 11. 30, where he says 
that " David being a prophet, and knowing that God 
had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of 



40 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

his loins he would raise up Messiah to sit on his 
throne, spake thus concerning him." 

The Psalms of David are full of heaving, many- 
colored clouds and mists of poetry, out of which shine 
here and the glimpses of the mystic future. In the 
second Psalm we have a majestic drama. The 
heathens are raging against Jehovah and his anointed 
Son. They say, Let us break their bands in sunder 
and cast away their cords. Then the voice of Jehovah 
is heard in the tumult, saying, calmly, " Yet have I 
set my King on my holy hill of Zion." Then an 
angelic herald proclaims : 

" I will declare the decree. 
The Lord hath spoken : 
Thou art' my Son ; 
This day have I begotten thee ! 

Ask of me and I will give the heathen for thine inheritance, 
And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." 

This mighty king, this glorious defender, is cel- 
ebrated as the All-Loving One. His reign is 'to be a 
reign of truth and love. All the dearest forms of 
human affection are used to shadow forth what he will 
be to his people. He is to be the royal bridegroom ; 
his willing people the bride. So, in the 45th Psalm, 
entitled "A Song of Love," we have the image of a 
mighty conqueror — radiant, beloved, adored, a being 
addressed both as God and the Son of God, who 
goes forth to victory : 

" Thou art fairer than the children of men. 
Grace is poured into thy lips. 
Therefore God hath blessed thee forever. 

Gird thy sword on thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and 
majesty. 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 41 

And in thy majesty ride prosperously because of thy truth and 

meekness and righteousness. 
Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. 
Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. 
A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. 
Thou lovest righteousness and hatest iniquity. 
Therefore God — thy God — hath anointed thee with the oil of 

gladness above thy fellows." 

Then follows a description of the royal bride, the 
king's daughter, who is all glorious within — her cloth- 
ing of wrought gold — who with gladness and rejoicing 
shall be brought to the king to become mother of 
princes. 

It is said by some that this is a marriage hymn for 
the wedding of a prince. It may have been so origin- 
ated; but in the mind of the devout Jew every scene 
and event in life had become significant and symbol- 
ical of this greater future. Every deliverer suggested 
the greater Deliverer; the joy of every marriage sug- 
gested -the joy of that divine marriage with a heavenly 
bridegroom. 

So the 7 2d Psalm, written originally for Solomon, 
expands into language beyond all that can be said of 
any earthly monarch. It was the last poem of David, 
and , the feelings of the king and father rose and 
melted into a great tide of imagery that belonged to 
nothing earthly. 

" Yea, all kings shall fall down before him ; 
All nations shall serve him. 
He shall deliver the needy when he crieth ; 
The poor also, and him that hath no helper. 
He shall spare the poor and needy, and shall save the souls of 

the needy. 
He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence, 



42 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

And precious shall their blood be in his sight. 

And he shall live, and to him shall be given the gold of Sheba. 

Prayer also shall be made for him continually, and daily shall 

he be praised. 
His name shall endure forever. 
His name shall be continued as long as the sun. 
Men shall be blessed in him. 
All nations shall call him blessed." 

But in these same Psalms there are glimpses of a 
Divine sufferer. In the 2 2d Psalm David speaks of 
sufferings which certainly never happened to himself 
— which were remarkably fulfilled in the last agonies 
of Jesus : 

" All they that see me laugh me to scorn. 
They shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, 
He trusted in God that he would deliver him. 
Let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him. 
I am poured out like water ; all my bones are out of joint. 
My heart is like wax — it is melted in my bosom. 
My strength is dried up like a potsherd. 
My tongue cleaveth to my mouth. 
Thou hast brought me into the dust of death. 
For dogs have compassed me, 
The assembly of the wicked have inclosed me ; 
They pierced my hands and my feet. 
I may tell all my bones. They look and stare on me. 
They part my garments among them 
And cast lots for my vesture.'' 

In this Psalm, written more than a thousand years 
before he came into the world, our Lord beheld ever 
before him the scenes of his own crucifixion; he could 
see the heartless stare of idle, malignant curiosity 
around his cross ; he could hear the very words of 
the taunts and revilings, and a part of the language 
of this" Psalm was among his last utterances. While 
the shadows of the great darkness were gathering 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 43 

around his cross he cried, " My God, my God, why 

hast thou' forsaken me?'* It would seem as if the 

words so bitterly fulfilled passed through his mind, as 

one by one the agonies and indignities followed each 

other, till at last he bowed his head and said, "It is 

finished" 

As time rolled on, this mingled chant of triumph 

and of suffering swelled clearer and plainer. In the 

grand soul of Isaiah, the Messiah and his kingdom 

were ever the outcome of every event that suggested 

itself. When the kingdom of Judah was threatened 

by foreign invasion, the Prophet breaks out with the 

promise of a Deliverer : 

" Behold, the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin 
shall conceive and bring forth a son and shall call his name Immanuel 
[God with us]." 

Again he bursts forth as if he beheld the triumph 
as a present reality : 

" Unto us a child is bor 
Unto us a son is given. 

The government shall be upon his shoulders. 
His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, 
Mighty God, 

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 
Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no 

end, 
Upon the throne of David and his kingdom, 
To establish it with justice from henceforth and forever. 
The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this." 

Again, a few chapters further on, he sings: 

" There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse • 
A Branch shall grow out of his roots. 
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him ; 
The spirit of wisdom and understanding, 



44 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

The spirit of counsel and might, 

The spirit of knowledge, and fear of the Lord. 
With righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth." 

Then follow vivid pictures of a golden age on earth, 
beneath his sway, when all enmities and ferocities 
even of the inferior animals shall cease, and universal 
love and joy pervade the earth. 

In the fifty-third of Isaiah we have again the sable 
thread of humilation and sorrow; the Messiah is to 
■be "despised and rejected of men;" his nation "hide 
their faces from him;" he "bears their griefs, and 
carries their sorrows," is " wounded for their trans- 
gressions," is "brought as a lamb to the slaughter," 
is "dumb before his accusers," is "taken from prison 
to judgment," is "cut off out of the land of the living," 
"makes his grave with the wicked and with the rich 
in his death," and thence is " raised again to an end- 
less kingdom." 

Thus far the tide of prophecy had rolled ; thus 
distinct and luminous had grown -the conception of a 
future suffering, victorious Lord and leader, when the 
Jewish nation, for its sins and unfaithfulness, was 
suffered to go to wreck. The temple was destroyed 
and the nation swept into captivity in a foreign land. 

But they carried everywhere with them the vision 
of their future Messiah. In their captivity and suffer- 
ings their religious feelings became intense, and wher- 
ever they were the Jews were always powerful and 
influential men. Daniel, by his divine skill in spiritual 
insight, became the chief of the Chaldean Magi, and 
his teachings with regard to the future Messiah may 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 45 

be traced in those passages of the Zendavesta which 
predict his coming, his universal dominion, and the 
resurrection of the dead. Everywhere through all 
nations this scattered seed of the Jews touched the 
spark of desire and aspiration — the longing for a future 
Redeemer. 

In the prophecies of Daniel we find the predictions 
of the Messiah assuming the clearness of forewritten 
history. The successive empires of the world are 
imaged under the symbol of a human body, with a 
head of gold, a breast of silver, body and thighs of 
brass, legs and feet of iron. By these types were 
indicated the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and 
Roman nations, with their successive rule. In pro- 
phetic vision, also, a stone was without hands cut out 
of the mountains, and it smote the feet of the image, 
so that the whole of it passed away like the chaff of 
the threshing-floor. 

How striking this description of that invisible, spirit- 
ual force which struck the world in the time of the 
Roman empire, and before which all the ancient 
dynasties have vanished ! 

In the ninth chapter of Daniel, 25th, 26th, 27th 
verses, we find given the exact time of the coming of 
the Messiah, of his death, of the subsequent destruction 
of Jerusalem by the Romans, and the cessation of the 
Jewish worship and sacrifices. Remembering that 
Daniel was the head of the Chaldean magi, we see 
how it is that their descendants were able to calculate 
the time of the birth of Christ and come to worship him.* 

* See note at the end of this chapter. 



46 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

At length the Jews were recalled from captivity and 
the temple rebuilt. While it was rebuilding prophets 
encouraged the work with prophecies of the Lord 
who should appear in it. The prophet Haggai thus 
speaks to those who depreciate the new temple by 
comparing it with the old : 

" Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory ? 
Yet now be strong, all ye people of the land, and work, for I am 
with you, saith the Lord of Hosts. For thus saith the Lord : Yet a 
little while and I will shake the heavens and earth, the sea and the 
dry land, and the Desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this 
house with glory, saith the Lord. The glory of this latter house 
shall be greater than of the former, for in this house will. I give peace, 
saith the Lord of Hosts." — Haggai, n. 3-9. 

The prophecies of Zechariah, which belonged to the 
same period and had the same object — to encourage 
the rebuilding of the second temple — are full of antici- 
pation of the coming Messiah. The prophet breaks 
forth into song like a bird of the morning : 

" Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; 
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem : 
Behold, thy king cometh unto thee. 
He is just and hath salvation ; 
He is lowly, riding upon an ass — 
Upon a colt, the foal of an ass." 

Again he breaks forth in another strain: 

" Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, 
Against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts. 
Smite the Shepherd, 
And the sheep shall be scattered.'' 

We remember that these words were quoted by our 
Lord to his disciples the night before his execution, 
when he was going forth to meet his murderers. A 



CHRIST IN PROPHECY. 47 

hundred or so of years later, the prophet Malachi 

says : 

" Behold, I send my messenger. 
He shall prepare the way before me. 

The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple : 
Even the messenger of the covenant, in whom ye delight ; 
But who may abide the day of his coming ? 
Who shall stand when He appeareth ? 
For, like a refiner's fire shall He be, 
And like fullers' soap. 

He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. 
He shall purify the sons of Levi." 

How remarkably this prophecy describes the fiery 
vehemence and energy of our Lord's first visit to the 
temple, when he drove out the money changers and 
completely cleansed the holy place of unseemly traffic ! 

With this prophet the voice of prediction ceases. 
Let us for a moment look back and trace its course. 
First, the vague promise of a Deliverer, born of a 
woman; then, a designation of the race from which 
he is to be born; then of the tribe; then of the family; 
then the very place of his birth is predicted — Bethle- 
hem-Ephratah being mentioned to discriminate it from 
another Bethlehem. Then come a succession of 
pictures of a Being concerning whom the most opposite 
things are predicted. He is to be honored, adored, 
beloved ; he is to be despised and rejected — his nation 
hide their faces from him. He is to be terrible and 
severe as a refiner's fire ; he is to be so gentle that a 
bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall 
he not quench. He is to be seized and carried from 
prison to judgment; he is surrounded by the wicked' 
his hands and feet are pierced, his garments divided-, 



48 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

they cast lots for his vesture ; he is united by his 
death both with the wicked and with the rich ; he is 
cut off from the land of the living. He is cut off, 
but not for himself; his kingdom is to be an everlast- 
ing kingdom; he is to have dominion from sea to sea, 
and of the increase of his government and of peace 
there is to be no end. 

How strange that for ages these conflicting and ap- 
parently contradictory oracles had been accumulatirg, 
until finally came One who fulfilled them all. Is not 
this indeed the Christ — the Son of God ? 



Note referred to on p. 45. — M. Lenormant says in " The Maoic of 
the Chaldees": " Tha more one advances in the understanding of 
the cuneiform text, the more one sees the necessity of revising the 
condemnation too prematurely uttered against the Book of Daniel' 
by the German Exegetical School. Without doubt, the use of certain 
Greek words serve to show that it has passed through the hands of 
some editor since the time of Alexander. But the substance of it is 
much more ancient — is imprinted with a perfectly distinct Babylonian 
tinge, and the picture of life in the court of Nabuchodonosor and his 
successors have an equal truthfulness which could not have been 
attained at a later period." 




Christmas 




"Spmigfetg §ab t fo(jo feast gibeu us fjriue oulg-begotteu 
£>ou to take our nature upon feint, aub as at tfeis time to 
be born of a pure birgiu, grant tfeat foe, being regenerate 
anb mabe ®feg efeilbreu bg aboptiou aub grate, mag be 
bailg reuefoeb bg % feg fjolg spirit, tferougfe tfee same, our 
$orb lesiis (ftferist, fofeo libetfe aub reignetfe briife ifeee aub 
tfee same spirit, eber one <§ob, bjorlb foitfeout enb. %mm" 



"When He bringeth His first-begotten into the world, 
He saith Let all the angels of God worship Him." 



^itrirat Christinas fallal 




ISTEN, lordlings, unto me, a tale I will you tell, 
Which as on this night of glee in Bethlehem befell, 
Joseph came from Nazareth with Mary, that sweet maid ; 
Weary were they, nigh to death, and for a lodging prayed. 

Chorus. — Sing high, sing low, sing to and fro, 
Go tell it forth with speed ; 
Cry out and shout all round about, 
That Christ is born indeed. 

In the inn they found no room ; a scanty bed they made ; 
Soon a babe so heavenly bright was in the manger laid. 
Forth he came, as light through glass : He came to save us all ; 
In the stable ox and ass before their Maker fall. 
Chorus. — Sing high, &c. 

Shepherds lay afield that night to keep their silly sheep ; 
Hosts of angels in their sight came down from heaven's steep ; 
Tidings ! tidings unto you ! to you a child is born 
Purer than the drops of dew and brighter than the morn. 
Chorus. — Sing high, &c. 

Onward then the angel sped ; the shepherds onward went ; 
God was in that manger bed : In worship low they bent. 
In the morning see ye mind, my masters, one and all, 
At the altar him to find, who lay within the stall. 
Chorus. — Sing high, &c. 

— Christmas Carols ; Ancient and Modern. 

49 



III. 



C{|* Craik of iri|k|m. 




E should have supposed that when the time 
came for the entrance of the great Hero 
upon the stage of this world, magnificent 
preparations would be made to receive him. A na- 
tion had been called and separated from all tribes of 
earth that he might be born of them, and it had 
been their one special mission to prepare for the 
coming of this One, their Head and King, in whom 
the whole of their organization — laws, teachings and 
prophecies — was to be fulfilled. Christ was the end 
for which the tabernacle was erected and the Temple 
built, for whom were the Holy of Holies, the altars 
and the sacrifices. He was the Coming One for 
whom priests and prophets had been for hundreds of 
years looking. 

What should we have expected cf Divine wisdom 
when the glorious hour approached ? We should have 
thought that the news would be sent to the leaders 
of the great national council of the Sanhedrim, to the 
High Priest and elders, that their Prince was at hand. 

5i 



c 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Doubtless we should suppose that the nation, apprised 
cf his coming, would have made ready his palace and 
have been watching at its door to do honor to their 
new born King. 

Far otherwise is the story as we have it. 

In the poorest, most sordid, most despised village 
cf Judaea dwelt, unknown and neglected, two members 
of the decayed and dethroned royal family of Judaea, 
— Joseph the carpenter and Mary his betrothed. 
Though every circumstance of the story shows the 
poverty of these individuals, yet they were not peas- 
ants. They were of royal lineage, reduced to the 
poverty and the simple life of the peasants. The 
Jews, intensely national, cherished the tradition of 
David their warrior and poet prince; they sang his 
psalms, they dwelt on his memory, and those persons, 
however poor and obscure, who knew that they had 
his blood in their veins were not likely to forget it. 

There have been times in the history of Europe 
when royal princes, the heirs of thrones, have so- 
journed in poverty and obscurity, earning their bread 
by the labor of their hands. But the consciousness 
of royal blood and noble birth gave to them a secret 
largeness of view and nobility of feeling which dis- 
tinguished them from common citizens. 

The song of Mary given in St. Luke shows the 
tone of her mind; shows her a woman steeped in the 
prophetic spirit and traditions, in the Psalms of her 
great ancestor, and herself possessing a lofty poetic 
nature. 

We have the story of the birth of Christ in only 



THE CRADLE OF BETHLEHEM. 53 

two of the Evangelists. In Matthew we have all the 
facts and incidents such as must have been derived 
from Joseph, and in Luke we have those which could 
only have been told by Mary. She it is who must 
have related to St. Luke the visit of the angel and 
his salutation to her. She it is who tells of the state 
of her mind when those solemn mysterious words first 
fell upon her ear : 

" Hail thou, highly favored ! The Lord is with thee : Blessed art 
thou among women ! v 

It is added, 

" And when she saw him she was troubled and cast about in her 
mind what manner of salutation this should be.'' 

Only Mary could have told the interior state of her 
mind, the doubts, the troubles, the mental inquiries, 
known only to herself. The rest of the interview, the 
magnificent and solemn words of the angel, in the na- 
ture of things could have come to the historian only 
through Mary's narrative. 

tl Thou shalt conceive and bring forth a Son and shalt call his 
name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the 
Highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his 
father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and 
of his kingdom there shall be no end.'' 

In St. Matthew we have the history of the hesitation 
of Joseph, his manly delicacy and tenderness for his 
betrothed wife, and the divine message to him in a 
dream; all of which are things that could have been 
known only through his own narration. 

We find also in this history, whose facts must have 
come from Joseph, a table of genealogy tracing his 
descent back to David, while in the account given by 



54 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Mary in St. Luke there is another and different table 
of genealogy. The probable inference on the face of 
it would be that the one is the genealogy of Joseph and 
the other of Mary ; and it confirms this supposition to 
find that she was spoken of in Rabinnic writings of an 
early period as the daughter of Heli,* who concludes 
the genealogy given in Luke, and on this supposition 
would be the father of Mary and grandfather of Jesus. 
Moreover, as the angel himself in announcing the birth 
of Christ laid special stress upon the fact that his mother 
was of the house of David, it is quite probable that the 
genealogy which proved that descent was very precious 
in Mary's eyes, and that this is therefore embedded in 
the account which St. Luke derives from her, as the 
very chief treasure of her life. That genealogical rec- 
ord was probably the one hoarded gem of her poverty 
and neglect — like a crown jewel concealed in the hum- 
ble cottage of an exiled queen. 

When the conviction was brought home to both 
these hidden souls that their house was to be the 
recipient of this greatest of all honors, we can easily 
see how it must have been a treasury of secret and 
wonderful emotions and contemplations between them. 
A world of lofty thought and feeling from that hour 
belonged to those two of all the world, separating them 
far as heaven is above the earth from the sordid neish- 



* Lightfoot, in his notes on Luke iii, maintains this theory, and 
quotes in support of it three passages from the Jerusalem Talmud, 
folio 77, 4, where Mary the mother of Jesus is denounced as the 
daughter of ffeli, and mother of a pretender. The same view is sus- 
tained by Paulus, Spanheim, and Lange. 



THE CRADLE OF BETHLEFIEM. 55 

borhood of Nazareth. Every tie which connected them 
with the royal house of David must have been wakened 
to intense vitality. All the prophecies with regard to 
the future Messiah must have blazed with a new radi- 
ance in the firmament of their thoughts. The decree 
from Cassar that all the world should be taxed, and 
the consequent movement towards a census of the 
Jewish nation, must have seemed to them a divine 
call and intimation to leave the village of Nazareth 
and go to their ancestral town, where prophecy had told 
them that the Messiah was to be born. 

" And thou Bethlehem-Ephratah, though thou be little among the 
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come a Governor which 
shall rule my people Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, 
from everlasting." 

On this magnificent mystery were these two poor, 
obscure, simple people pondering in their hearts as 
they took their journey over the picturesque hill-country 
towards the beautiful little town of Bethlehem, the vil- 
lage of their fathers ; Bethlehem, the city of the loving 
Ruth, and her descendant, the chivalrous poet-king, 
David. 

It seems they went there poor and without acquaint- 
ance, casting themselves in simple faith on the pro- 
tection of God. The caravanserai of those days bore 
more resemblance to camping-huts than anything sug- 
gested by our modern inn. There was a raised plat- 
form which gave to the traveler simply space to spread 
his bed and lie down, while below this was the portion 
allotted to the feeding and accommodation of the an- 
imals. 



56 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

When these two guests arrived the space allotted 
to travelers was all taken up, and a shelter had to be 
arranged in the part allotted to the animals. We are 
so accustomed to look at that cradle in Bethlehem 
through the mists of reverential tradition that we have 
ceased to realize what a trial and humiliation it was to 
these children of a royal race to find themselves out- 
casts and homeless in the city of their fathers — in the 
very hour when home and its comfort were most needed. 
We must remember they had to live by faith as well 
as we. Though an angel had announced this coming 
child as the King of Israel, still their faith must have 
been severely tried to find themselves, as the hour of 
his birth approached, unwelcomed, forlorn, and rejected 
by men, in the very city of David. 

The census in which they came to have their names 
enrolled was the last step in the humiliation of their 
nation; it was the preparation for their subjugation 
and taxation as a conquered tribe under the Roman 
yoke: and they, children of the royal house of David, 
were left to touch the very lowest descent of humili- 
ation, outcasts from among men, glad to find a resting 
place with the beasts of the stall. 

Christ is called the Morning Star, and truly he rose 
in the very darkest hour of the night. The Friend of 
the outcast, the Care-taker of the neglected, the poor 
man's Helper, must needs be born thus. 

But was there no message? Yes. In those very 
hills and valleys of Bethlehem where David kept his 
father's sheep were still shepherds abiding. The Psalms 



THE CRADLE OF BETHLEHEM. 57 

of David were there the familiar melodies; they lived 
by the valley and hill, as when he sang of old, 

" The Lord is my Shepherd ; 
I shall not want. 

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures ; 
He leadeth me beside the still waters." 

These shepherds probably were poor men of a de- 
vout and simple faith, men who longed and prayed 
and waited for the consolation of Israel. Their daily 
toil was ennobled by religious associations. Jehovah 
himself was addressed as the 

" Shepherd of Israel ; 
He that leadeth Joseph like a flock ; 
He that dwelleth between the cherubims." 

It was to such souls as these, patient, laborious, 
prayerful, that the message came. That the Good 
Shepherd — the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls — was 
born. No comment can brighten or increase the sol- 
emn beauty of those simple words in which this story 
is told. 

" And there were in the same country shepherds 
abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by 
night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon 
them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about 
them ; and they were afraid. And the angel said unto 
them, Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings 
of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto 
you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, 
which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign 
unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling- 
clothes, lying in a manger. 



58 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude 
of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to 
God in the highest, and on earth Peace, Good-will 
toward men. 

"And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away 
from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to 
another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see 
this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath 
made known unto us. And they came with haste, and 
found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. 
And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the 
saying which was told them concerning this child. And 
all they that heard it wondered at those things which 
were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all 
these things, and pondered them in her heart. 

"And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising 
God for all the things that they had heard and seen, 
as it was told unto them." 

They received the reward of faith ; having heard the 
heavenly message, they believed and acted upon it. 
They did not stop to question or reason about it. 
They did not say, "How can this be?" but "Let us 
go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which 
is come to pass." And so it was that they were re- 
warded by seeing and hearing the wonders "as it was 
told unto them-." 

The visit of these simple, confiding souls doubtless 
cheered the patient hearts of the humble outcasts and 
strengthened their faith. 

If now it be asked, Why was all this so ? we have only 
to answer that heaven is a very different world from our 



THE CRADLE OF BETHLEHEM. .59 

earth, and that heavenly ways of viewing people and 
things are wholly above those of earth. The apostle 
says that the foolishness of God is wiser than man, and 
the weakness of God is stronger than man; that the 
things that are highly esteemed among men are abomi- 
nations in the sight of God. 

When a new king and a new kingdom were to be set 
up on earth, no pomp of man, no palace made with 
hands, was held worthy of him; few were the human 
hearts deemed worthy of the message, and these were 
people that the world knew not of — simple-minded, 
sincere, loving, prayerful people. 

The priests and scribes were full of national pride 
and bitterness, burning for revenge on the Romans, 
longing for conquest and power. They were im- 
patiently waiting for the Leader whose foot should be 
on the necks of their enemies. They had no sense of 
sin, no longing for holiness, no aspirations for a Spiritual 
Deliverer; and therefore no message was sent to 
them. 

But to the simple-minded Joseph the angel said, 
"Thou shalt call his name Jesus (Saviour) for he shall 
save his people from their sins." Not from the Ro- 
mans but from their sins he came to save, and the 
message of his coming was to humble souls, who 
wanted this kind of salvation. 

But there was a fitness furthermore in these circum- 
stances. Up to this time the poor and the unfortunate 
had been the despised of the earth. It had been pre- 
dicted again and again that the Messiah should be the 
especial Friend of the poor. 



6o FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

" He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, 
The poor and him that hath no helper. 
He shall spare the soul of the needy, 
And precious shall their blood be in his sight.'' 

As a mother when seeking a lost and helpless child, 
outcast in some den of misery, would pass by palaces 
and refuse the shelter of luxurious roofs to share the 
poverty of her beloved, so the poor man's Friend and 
Lord chose to come in the hut and the stable rather than 
in the palace, that he might be known forever as the 
God of the poor, the Patron of the neglected, and 
the Shepherd of the lost. 




Christmas Panting 9pm. 




WAS in the winter cold when earth 
Was desolate and wild, 
That angels welcomed at his birth 
The everlasting Child. 
From realms of ever-brightening day, 

And from his throne above, 
He came with human kind to stay 
All lowliness and love. 

Then in the manger the poor beast 

Was present with his Lord ; 
Then swains, and pilgrims from the East, 

Saw, wondered, and adored. 
And I this morn would come with them 

This blessed sight to see, 
And to the Babe of Bethlehem 

Bow low the reverent knee. 

But I have not, it makes me sigh, 

One offering in my power. 
'T is winter all with me, and I 

Have neither fruit nor flower. 
O God — O Brother ! let me give 

My worthless self to thee, 
And, that the years that I may live 

May pure and spotless be, 
61 



62 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Grant me thyself, O Saviour dear, — 

Thy Spirit, undefiled, — 
That I may be in heart and mind 

As gentle as a child ; 
That I may tread life's arduous ways 

As thou thyself hast trod 
And, in the might of prayer and praise, 

Keep ever near to God. 

Light of the everlasting morn ! 

Deep through my spirit shine. 
There let thy presence, newly born, 

Make all my being Thine : 
Then try me as the silver, try 

And cleanse my soul with care, 
Till thou art able to descry 

Thy faultless image there. 



— C. J. Black. 




IV. 



Cji* flesseir tSSLawm, 



HERE was one woman whom the voice of a 
Divine Messenger, straight from heaven, pro- 
nounced highly favored. In what did this 
favor consist? 

Of noble birth, of even royal lineage, she had fallen 
into poverty and obscurity. The great, brilliant, liv- 
ing world of her day knew her as the rushing equi- 
pages and palatial mansions of our great cities know 
the daughters of poor mechanics in rural towns. 

There was plenty of splendor, and rank, and fashion 
in Jerusalem then. Herod the Great was a man of 
cultivation and letters, and beautified the temple with 
all sorts of architectural embellishments; and there 
were High Priests, and Levites, and a great religious 
aristocracy circling about its precincts, all of whom, 
if they thought of any woman as highly favored of 
heaven, would have been likely to think of somebody 
quite other than the simple country girl of Naza- 
reth. Such an one as she was not in all their 
thoughts. Yet she was the highly favored woman of 

63 



64 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

the world; the crowned queen of women; the One 
whose lot — above that of all that have lived woman's 
life, before or since — was blessed. 

The views adopted in the Roman Church with re- 
respect to this one Woman of women have tended 
to deprive the rest of the world of a great source of 
comfort and edification by reason of the opposite 
extreme to which Protestant reaction has naturally 
gone. 

John Knox was once taken on board a ship manned, 
as he says, by Popish sailors, who gave into his hand 
an image of the Virgin Mary and wanted to compel 
him to kiss it. Stout John tossed it overboard, saying, 
"Let our Lady now save herself; she is light enough, 
let her learn to swim." To have honored the Virgin 
Mary, even in thought, was shrunk from by the Prot- 
estants of those times as an approach to idolatry. 
An image or a picture of her in a Puritan house 
would have been considered an approach to the sin 
of Achan. Truth has always had the fate of the shuttle- 
cock between the conflicting battle-doors of controversy. 

This is no goddess crowned with stars, but some- 
thing nobler, purer, fairer, more appreciable — the One 
highly favored and blessed among Women. 

The happiness of Mary's lot was peculiar to woman- 
hood. It lay mostly in the sphere of family affection. 
Mary had in this respect a lot whose blessedness was 
above every other mother. She had as her child the 
loveliest character that ever unfolded through child- 
hood and youth to manhood. He was entirely her 
own. She had a security in possessing him such 



THE BLESSED WOMAN. 65 

as is not accorded to other mothers. She knew 
that the child she adored was not to die till he had 
reached man's estate — she had no fear that accident, 
or sickness, or any of those threatening causes which 
give sad hours to so many other mothers, would come 
between him and her. 

Neither was she called to separate from him. The 
record shows that he was with his parents until their 
journey to Jerusalem, when he was twelve years old; 
and then, after his brief absence of three days when 
he was left behind, and found in the Temple disputing 
with the doctors, we are told that " he went down to 
Nazareth and was subject unto them." 

These words are all that cover eighteen years of 
the purest happiness ever given to mortal woman. To 
love, to adore, to possess the beloved object in per- 
fect security, guarded by a divine, promise — this bless- 
edness was given to but one woman of all the human 
race. That peaceful home in Nazareth, overlooked by 
all the great, gay world, how many happy hours it 
had ! Day succeeded day, weeks went to months, and 
months into years, and this is all the record : " Jesus 
increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with 
God and man." 

Looking at Jesus as a mere human being, a his- 
torical character, as some do, the one great peculiarity 
of him is the intensity of the personal affection he 
has been able to inspire. The Apostles give him one 
title which was his above all the other children of men, 
"The Beloved." Christ has been and now is beloved, 
as no other human being ever was. Others have been 



66 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

good men — true men, benefactors of their race — but 
when they died their personality faded from the earth. 

Tell a Hottentot or a Zulu the story of Socrates, and 
it excites no very deep emotion; but for eighteen hun- 
dred years Hottentots, Zulus, South Sea Islanders and 
savages, Greenlanders, — men, women, and children in 
every land, with every variety of constitutional habit, — 
have conceived such an ardent, passionate, personal 
love to Jesus of Nazareth that they have been ready 
to face torture and death for his sake. 

"It is not for me to covet things visible or invisible," 
said Polycarp, on his way to martyrdom, " if only I may 
'obtain Jesus Christ. The fire, the cross, the rush of wild 
beasts, the tearing asunder of bones, the fracture of 
hmLj, and the grinding to powder of the whole body, let 
tnese, the devil's torments, come upon me, provided only 
that I obtain Jesus Cfrrist." 

So felt the Christians of the first ages, and time does 
not cool the ardor. There are at this present hour hun- 
dreds of thousands of obscure men and women, humble 
artisans, ignorant negroes, to whom Christ is dearer than 
life, and who would be capable of just this grand devo- 
tion. It is not many years since that in the Island of 
Madagascar Christian converts were persecuted, and 
theie were those who met death for Christ's sake with 
all the triumphant fervor of primitive ages. Jesus has 
been the one man of whom it has been possible to say 
to people of all nations, ages, and languages, "Whom 
having not seen ye love, and in whom, though now ye 
see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeak- 
able and full of glory." 



THE BLESSED WOMAN. 67 

If we should embody our idea of the Son with whom 
Mary lived in secure intimacy for thirty years, we should 
call him Love, itself. He was not merely lovely, but he 
was love. He had a warming, creative power as to love. 
He gave birth to new conceptions of love; to a fervor, 
a devotion, a tenderness, of which before the human soul 
scarcely knew its own capacity. 

Napoleon asserted the divinity of Jesus from the sole 
fact of his wonderful power of producing love. " I know 
men," he said, "and I know Jesus was not a man; — 
eighteen hundred years ago he died defeated, reviled, 
and yet at this hour there are thousands all over the 
world who would die for him. I am defeated and over- 
thrown, and who cares for me now ? Who fights, who 
conquers for me? What an abyss between my misery 
and the triumph of Jesus !" 

The blessedness of Mary was that she was the one 
human being who had the right of ownership and inti- 
mate oneness with the Beloved. For thirty years Jesus 
had only the task of living an average, quiet, ordinary 
human life. He was a humble artisan, peacefully work- 
ing daily for the support of his mother. He was called 
from her by no public duty ; he was hers alone. When 
he began his public career he transcended these limits. 
Then he declared that every soul that heard the will 
of God, and did it, should be to him as his mother — 
a declaration at which every Christian should veil his 
face in awe and gratitude. 

We may imagine the peace, the joy, the serenity of 
that household of which Jesus was the center. He read 
and explained the Scriptures, and he prayed with them, 



68 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

in such blessed words as those that are recorded in St. 
John's Gospel. In this life of simplicity and poverty he 
taught them that sweet and sacred secret of a peaceful 
daily looking to God for food and raiment that can be 
learned only by the poor and dependent. He made 
labor holy by choosing it as his lot. 

Many little incidents in Christ's life show the man of 
careful domestic habits. He was in all things method- 
ical and frugal. The miraculous power he possessed 
never was used to surround him with any profusion. 
He would have the fragments of the feast picked up and' 
stored in the baskets, "that nothing should be lost." 
His illustrations show the habits of a frugal home. 
His parable of the kingdom of heaven, likened to 
the leaven hidden in three measures of meal, gives 
us to believe that doubtless he had often watched 
his mother in the homely process of bread-making. 
The woman, who, losing one piece of money from 
her little store, lights a candle and searches dili- 
gently, brings to our mind the dwelling of the poor 
where every penny has its value. His illustrations from 
husbandry — plowing, sowing, growing, the lost sheep, 
the ox fallen into the pit, the hen and her chickens 
— all show a familiarity and a kind sympathy with the 
daily habits and life interests of the poor. Many little 
touches indicate, also, the personal refinement and deli- 
cacy of his habits, the order and purity that extended 
to all his ways. While he repressed self-indulgence 
and the profusion of extravagant luxury, he felt keenly 
and justified bravely that profusion of the heart that 
delights in costliness as an expression of love. 



THE BLESSED WOMAN. 69 



There seems to be reason to think that the retirement 
and stillness of the peasant life in Nazareth, its deeply 
hidden character, was peculiarly suited to the consti- 
tutional taste both of Jesus and his mother. 

Mary seems, from the little we see of her, to have 
been one of those silent, brooding women who seek 
solitude and meditation, whose thoughts are expressed 
only confidentially to congenial natures. There is every 
evidence that our Lord's individual and human nature 
was in this respect peculiarly sympathetic with that of 
his mother. The prophecy of Isaiah predicts this 
trait of his character : " He shall not cry, nor lift 
up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street." 
In the commencement of his ministry we find the same 
avoidance of publicity. He hushed the zeal of his 
disciples. He wrought miracles with injunctions of 
secrecy — "See thou tell no man." The rush of sen- 
sational popularity seemed especially distasteful to him, 
and we find him after a little retiring from it. "Come 
ye with me into a desert place and rest awhile," he 
says to his disciples, " for there were so many coming 
and going that they found no leisure so much as to 
eat." 

Thus, the retirement of the garden of Gethsemane — 
where it is said Jesus ofttimes resorted with his disci- 
ples — and the quietude of the family of Mary, Martha 
and Lazarus at Bethany, seemed to be especially at- 
tractive to him. Indeed, so great a desire had he for 
quiet and peace, and for the calm of that congenial 
thought and communion that can be had with but a 
few, that his public life must be regarded as a constant 



7© FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



act of self-abnegation. It was as foreign to him to be 
out in the hot dare and dust of publicity, and to battle 
in the crowded ways of life, as to the most gentle 
woman. Divine Love was ever, in this bustling, noisy, 
vulgar, outward life, lonely, and a stranger. " He was 
in the world," says St. John, "and the world was made 
by him, but the world knew him not." 

There was one woman of all women to whom it was 
given to know him perfectly, entirely, intimately — to 
whom his nature was knit in the closest possible union 
and identity. He was bone of her bone and flesh of 
her flesh — his life grew out of her immortal nature. 
We are led to see in our Lord a peculiarity as to the 
manner of his birth which made him more purely sym- 
pathetic with his mother than any other son of woman. 
He had no mortal father. All that was human in him 
was her nature ; it was the union of the Divine nature, 
with the nature of a pure woman. Hence there was 
in Jesus more of the pure feminine element than in 
any other man. It was the feminine element exalted 
and taken in union with divinity. Robertson has a 
very interesting sermon on this point, showing how the 
existence of this feminine element in the character of 
Jesus supplies all that want in the human heart to 
which it has been said the worship of the Virgin Mother 
was adapted. Christ, through his intimate relationship 
with this one highly favored among women, had the 
knowledge of all that the heart of man or woman can 
seek for its needs. 

There is in the sacred narrative a reticence in regard 
to the mother of Jesus which would seem to bear very 



THE BLESSED WOMAN. 7* 



significantly upon any theories of their mutual re- 
lations, and especially upon their present connection in 
spiritual matters — the idea that Mary, as Mother of 
God, retains in heaven authority over her son, and that 
he can deny her nothing, St. John takes care to state 
specifically the scene in Cana of Galilee where Jesus 
informs his mother that, in his Divine relations and 
duties, her motherly relation has no place. 

" Woman, what have I do with thee ? mine hour is 
not yet come." 

The address, though not in the connection wanting 
in respect, or so abrupt as it appears in the translation, 
was still very decided, and was undoubtedly one of 
those declarations meant not only for her but for 
mankind. In the same spirit are his words where, in 
his public ministration, word was brought to him that 
his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to 
see him : " Who is my mother, and who are my breth- 
ren ? And he looked around on them that sat about 
him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren. 
For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is 
my brother and sister and mother." 

From that noble utterance, the Song of Mary — 
retained by the church as a magnificat — there is evi- 
dence of a soul not only exalted by genius and en- 
thusiasm, but steeped in the traditions of ancient 
prophecy. It is so like the Psalms of David that a 
verse of it, if read out casually, might seem to be 
taken from them. There is no doubt that a soul like 
this, when possessed of the great secret of prophecy, 
devoted itself with ardor to all in the Hebrew Script- 



7 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ures which foreshadowed her son's career. She was 
the first teacher of the child Jesus in the Law and 
the Prophets. One of Raphael's most beautiful con- 
ceptions of her represents her sitting thoughtfully, 
holding the hand of the infant Jesus, while the roll 
of the prophecies lies in her lap, and her eyes are 
fixed on the distance as in deep thought. There is a 
similar picture of her by Palma Vecchio. The com- 
munings of Christ and his mother on these subjects 
must have been so long and so intimate that she 
more calmly and clearly knew exactly whither his life 
was tending than did his disciples. She had been 
forewarned in Daniel of the time when the Messiah 
was to be cut off, but not for himself; she understood, 
doubtless, the deep, hidden meaning of the Psalm 
that describes the last agonies, the utter abandonment 
of her son. 

There is in her whole character a singular poise 
and calmness. When the Angel of the Annunciation 
appeared to her she was not overcome by the pres- 
ence of a spiritual being as Daniel was, who records 
that "he fell on his face and there was no strength 
in him." Mary, in calm and firm simplicity, looks 
the angel in the face, and ponders what the wonder- 
ful announcement may mean. When she finds that it 
really does mean that she, a poor lonely maiden, is 
the chosen woman of all the human race — the gainer 
of the crown of which every Jewish woman had 
dreamed for ages — she is still calm. She does not 
sink under the honor, she is not confused or over- 
come, but answers with gentle submission, " Behold 



THE BLESSED WOMAN. 73 



the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according 
to his word." 

Yet the words of the magnificat show a keen sense 
of the honor and favor done her. She exults in it 
with an innocent heartiness of simplicity. " He hath 
regarded the low estate of his handmaid, for from 
henceforth all nations shall call me blessed." 

It is remarkable that Mary was never in any one in- 
stance associated in public work with Jesus. She was 
not among the women who are mentioned as following 
and ministering unto him. She was, it seems, in Jeru- 
salem at the last Passover of our Lord, but it was not 
with her, or at her table, that he prepared to eat the 
Passover. He did that as master in his own house, 
with a family of little children of his own choosing. 
Mary was not at the first Eucharistic feast. Undoubt- 
edly there was foreknowledge and divine design in all 
this, and doubtless Jesus and Mary were so completely 
one in will and purpose that she was of perfect accord 
with him in all these arrangements. There are souls 
so perfectly attuned to each other, with such an exact 
understanding and sympathy, that personal presence 
no longer becomes a necessity. They are always with 
each other in spirit, however outwardly separated. But 
we find her with him once more, openly and visibly, 
in the hour when all others forsook him. The deli- 
cacy of woman may cause her to shrink from the 
bustle of public triumph, but when truth and holiness 
are brought to public scorn she is there to defend, to 
suffer, to die. 

Can we conceive what this mob was, that led Jesus 



74 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

forth to death ? Mobs in our day are brutal, but what 
were they then ? Consider what the times must have 
been when scourging was an ordinary punishment for 
criminals, and crucifixion an ordinary mode of execu- 
tion ; what were the sights, the sounds, the exhibitions 
of brutality among which Mary and the women friends 
of Jesus followed him to the cross ! 

And Mary did not faint — did not sink. She did not 
fall to the earth when an angel predicted her glory ; she 
did not fall now, when the sword had gone through 
her heart. It is all told in one word, " Now there stood 
by the cross of Jesus his mother." The last word that 
Jesus spoke to any mortal ear was to commend her to 
his dearest friend. 

After the resurrection Mary appears once more among 
the disciples, waiting and praying for a descent of the 
Holy Ghost — and then in the sacred record we hear of 
her no more. 

But enough is recorded of her to make her forever 
dear to all Christian hearts. That Mary is now with 
Jesus, that there is an intimacy and sympathy between 
her soul and his such as belong to no other created 
being, seems certain. Nor should we suffer anything 
to prevent that just love and veneration which will 
enable us to call her Blessed, and to look forwaid to 
meeting her in heaven as one of the brightest joys 
of that glorious world. 




CraHe &rajj of % tyitmb f irjjhf. 




HE Virgin stills the crying 
Of Jesus, sleepless lying ; 
And, singing for his pleasure, 
Thus calls upon her treasure : 

My darling, do not weep ; 
My Jesu, sleep. 

O lamb, my love inviting, 
O star, my soul delighting, 
O flower of my own bearing, 
O jewel past comparing, 

My darling, do not weep ; 

My Jesu, sleep. 

My child, of might indwelling, 
My sweet, all sweets excelling, 
Of bliss the fountain flowing, 
The day-spring ever glowing, 

My darling, do not weep ; 

My Jesu, sleep. 

My joy, my exultation, 

My spirit's consolation, 

My son, my Lord, my brother, 

Oh listen to thy mother ; 

My darling, do not weep ; 

My Jesu, sleep. 
75 



76 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Say, vvouldst thou heavenly sweetness? 
Or love, or answering meekness ? 
Or is fit music wanting ? 
angels, raise your chaunting ! 

My darling, do not weep ; 

My Jesu, sleep. 



— Translated from the Latin. 




V. 



%\t Halj Cp^ofr. 



N the first recorded public prayer of the apos^ 
ties after the resurrection of our Lord he is 
called "Thy Holy Child Jesus." 

The expression is a very beautiful one if we couple 
it with the Master's declaration that the greatest in 
the kingdom of Heaven is the most like a little child, 
and that to become as a little child is the first step 
toward fitness for the knowledge of spiritual things. 

There has been in this world one rare flower of 
Paradise, — a holy childhood growing up gradually into 
a holy manhood, and always retaining in mature life 
the precious, unstained memories of perfect innocence. 
The family at Nazareth was evidently a secluded one. 
Persons of such an elevated style of thought as Joseph 
and Mary, conscious of so solemn a destiny and guard- 
ing with awe the treasure and hope of a world, must 
have been so altogether different from the ordinary 
peasants of Nazareth that there could have been little 
more than an external acquaintance between them. 
They were undoubtedly loving, gentle, and tender to 

77 



78 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

every one, full of sympathy for trouble and of kind 
offices in sickness, but they carried within their hearts 
a treasury of thoughts, emotions, and hopes, which 
could not be perceived by those whose spiritual eyes 
had never been opened. It is quite evident from the 
surprise that the Nazarenes manifested when Christ 
delivered his first sermon among them that they had 
never seen anything unusual in the family, and that 
Christ himself had been living among them only as 
the carpenter's son. This case is not peculiar. The 
great artist or poet often grows to manhood without 
one of his townspeople suspecting who he is, and what 
world he lives in. Milton or Raphael might so have 
grown up unknown in a town of obscure fishermen. 

The apocryphal gospels have busied themselves in 
inventing legends of this child-life of Jesus. Nothing 
so much shows the difference between the false and 
the true as these apocryphal gospels compared with 
the real. Jesus is represented there as a miraculous 
child, using supernatural power for display among his 
school-mates and for the gratification of childish piques 
and resentments. 

The true gospel gives but one incident of the child- 
life of Jesus, and that just at the time when childhood 
is verging into youth; for the rest, we are left to con- 
jecture. 

We are told that his infancy was passed in the 
land of Egypt. Jesus was the flower of his nation 
— he was the blossom of its history — and therefore 
it seemed befitting that his cradle should be where 
was the cradle of his great forerunner, Moses, on the 



THE HOLY CHILDHOOD. 



79 



banks of the Nile. The shadows of the pyramids, 
built by the labors of his ancestors, were across the 
land of his childhood, and the great story of their op- 
pression and deliverance must have filled the thoughts 
and words of his parents. So imbued was the Jewish 
mind with the habit of seeing in every thing in their 
history the prophecy and type of the great Fulflller, 
that St. Matthew speaks of this exile in Egypt as 
having occurred that the type might find completeness 
and that Israel, in the person of its Head and Repre- 
sentative, might a second time be called out of Egypt : 

" That it might be fulfilled that was spoken of the Lord by the 
prophet, 

" Out of Egypt have I called my son." 

We do not know with any denniteness the length of 
this, sojourn in Egypt, nor how much impression the 
weird and solemn scenery and architecture of Egypt 
may have made upon the susceptible mind of the 
child; but to the parents it must have powerfully 
and vividly recalled all that ancient and prophetic 
literature which in every step pointed to their won- 
derful son. The earliest instructions of Jesus must 
have been in this history and literature of his own 
nation — a literature unique, poetic and sublime. But 
we have no tidings of him till that time in his his 
tory when, according to the customs of his people, he 
was of age to go up to the great national festival at 
Jerusalem. 

The young Jewish boy was instructed all the earlier 
years of his life in view of this great decisive step, 
which, like confirmation in the Christian Church, 



80 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ranked him as a fully admitted member of the house 
of Israel. It was customary to travel to Jerusalem in 
large companies or caravans, beguiling the way with 
hymns of rejoicing as they drew nigh to the holy city. 
Jesus, probably, was one of many boys who for the 
first time were going up to their great national festival. 

One incident only of this journey is given, but that 
a very striking one. After the feast was over, when 
the caravan was returning, they passed a day's journey 
on their way without perceiving that the child was not 
among the travelers. This — in a large company of 
kinsfolk and acquaintance, and where Jesus might have 
been, as he always afterward seemed to be, a great per- 
sonal favorite — was quite possible. His parents, trusting 
him wholly, and feeling that he was happy among friends, 
gave themselves no care till the time of the evening 
encampment. Then, discovering their loss, they imme- 
diately retraced their steps the next day to Jerusalem, 
Inquiring for him vainly among their acquaintances. 
They at last turned their steps toward the outer courts 
of the Temple, where was the school of the learned 
Rabbins who explained the law of God. There, seated 
at their feet, eager and earnest, asking them questions 
and hearing their answers, the child Jesus had awak- 
ened to a new and deeper life, and become so absorbed 
as to forget time, place, friends, and everything else 
in the desire to understand the Holy Word. 

It is a blot upon this beautiful story to speak cl 
Jesus as " disputing" with the teachers of his nation, 
or setting himself up to instruct them. His position 
was that of a learner ; we are not told that he asserted 



THE HOLY CHILDHOOD. 8l 

anything, but that he listened and asked questions. 
The questions of a pure child are often the most search- 
ing that can be asked ; the questions of the holy child 
Jesus must have penetrated to the very deepest of divine 
mysteries. Those masterly discussions of the sayings 
of the Rabbins, which years after appeared in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount, may have sprung from seeds thus 
dropped into the childish mmd. ' 

But, while he is thus absorbed and eager, his soul 
burning with newly-kindled enthusiasm, suddenly his 
parents, agitated and distressed, lay hold on him with 
tender reproach : " Son,' why hast thou thus dealt with 
us ? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrow- 
ing." 

Jesus answers, as he so often did in- after life, as 
speaking almost unconsciously out of some higher 
sphere, and in higher language than that of earth : 
" How is it that ye sought me ? Did ye not know that 
I must be about my Father's business?" 

It seemed to say, " Why be alarmed ? is not this my 
Father's house ; is not this study of his law my proper 
work; and where should I be but here?" 

But immediately it is added, " He went down to 
Nazareth and was subject to them." Even Christ 
pleased not himself; the holiest fire, the divinest pas- 
sion, was made subject to the heavenly order, and im- 
mediately he yielded to the father and mother whom 
God had made his guides an implicit obedience. 

We have here one glimpse of a consuming ardor, a 
burning enthusiasm, which lay repressed and hidden for 
eighteen years more, till the Father called him to speak. 



82 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

That simple, natural utterance in the child's mouth 
— " My Father" — shows the secret of the holy peace 
which kept him happy in waiting. The Father was a 
serene presence, an intimate and inward joy. In the 
beautiful solitudes about Nazareth the divine benedic- 
tion came down upon him : 

" I Mall be as the dew to Israel: 
He shall grow as the lily, 
And cast forth his roots as Lebanon." 

These two natural symbols s'eem fittest to portray the 
elements of that holy childhood which grew to holiest 
manhood. They give us, as its marked characteristics, 
the shining purity of the lily and the grand strength 
and stability of the cedars of Lebanon. 




."■:'•'■>'- f-'-^T 



Cjje ^jr^rtos' CraL 



tejRF2i| SHEPHERD of Israel, 

B^*wil ^^ ^ ost noc k are strayim 

|Dli*g^4| Our Helper, our Saviour, 

How long thy delaying! 
Where, Lord, is thy promise 

To David of old, 
Of the King and the Shepherd 

To gather the fold ! 



Cold, cold is the night wind, 

Our hearts have no cheer. 
Our Lord and our Leader, 

When wilt thou appear?" 
So sang the sad shepherds 

On Bethlehem^s cold ground 
When lo, the bright angels 

In glory around ! 



" Peace, peace, ye dear shepherds,, 
And be of good cheer ; 
The Lord whom ye long for 
Is coming — is here ! 

&3 



84 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



In the city of David 

Behold him appear — 
A babe in a manger — 

Go worship him there." 

They went and were blessed. 

Dear soul, go thou too ; 
The Saviour for them 

Is the Saviour for you. 
Oh, kneel by the manger, 

Oh, kneel by the cross ; 
Accept him, believe him, — 

All else is but dross. 

—ft. B. S. 




(Spijjaitg. 




foljo bg t\z leabiug of a Star bibst manifest 
t(?g oulg - begotten Son to flje fettiles, mereifullg grant 
tfeat be, toljo knofo tjjee note bg faitjj, mag after tins life 
^abe tlje fruition of % glorious (iobfjeab, tjjrougij iesus 
Christ our |Torb. ^meu." 



" I WILL SHAKE ALL NATIONS ; AND THE DESIRE OF ALL 
NATIONS SHALL COME." 



VI. 



<&entil* frojrljerms d Ctjrat. 



" Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judsea, in the days 
of Herod the king, behold there came wise men to Jerusalem, 
saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen 
his star in the east, and are come to worship him." 




AS the Messiah to be the King of the Jews 
alone ? No ; he was for the world ; he was 
the Good Shepherd of nations, and declared 
that he had "other sheep, not of this fold." 

It seems to be most striking that, in the poetical and 
beautiful account of the birth of Jesus, there is record 
of two distinct classes who come to pay him homage 
— not only the simple-minded and devout laboring 
people of the Jews, but also the learned sages of the 
Gentiles. 

There are constant intimations throughout the Old 
Testament that God's choice of the Jews was no favor- 
itism; that he had not forgotten other races, but was 
still the God and Father of mankind ; and that he 
chose Israel not to aggrandize one people, but to make 
that people his gift -bearers to the whole world. 

There are distinct evidences in the Old Testament 
&5 



86 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

that the coming Saviour was caring for others beside 
the Jewish race. Witness his gracious promise to the 
slave Hagar that he would bless her descendants. In 
the very family line from which Messiah was to be born 
a loving and lovely Moabite woman was suffered to be 
introduced as the near ancestress of King David, and 
the name of the Gentile Ruth stands in the genealogy 
of Jesus, as a sort of intimation that he belonged not 
to a race but to the world. In a remarkable pas- 
sage of Isaiah (xliv. 28, xlv. 1, 4, 5) Jehovah, proclaim- 
ing his supreme power, declares himself to be He 

" That saith of Cyrus — 
He is my shepherd, 
He shall perform all my pleasure . 
Even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built ; 
And to the Temple, Thy foundations shall be laid. 
Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, 
To Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden. 

For Jacob my servant's sake, 

For Israel mine elect, 

I have called thee by my name : 

I have surnamed thee, thcugh thou hast not known me. 

I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me : 

I girded thee, though thou hast not known me." 

The Babylonian captivity answered other purposes 
beside the punishment and restoration of the Jewish 
nation to the worship of the true God. It was a sort 
of prophetic " Epiphany," in which the Messianic 
aspirations of the Jews fell outside of their own 
nation, like sparks of fire on those longings which 
were common to the human race. Even the Jewish 
prophet spoke of the Messiah as " The Desire of all 
Nations." 



GENTILE PROPHECIES OF CHRIST. 87 

And this desire and the hope of its fulfillment 
were burning fervently in the souls of all the best 
of the Gentile nations ; for not among the Jews alone, 
but among all the main races and peoples of antiquity, 
have there been prophecies and traditions more or less 
clear of a Being who should redeem the race of man 
from the power of evil and bring in an era of peace 
and love. 

The yearning, suffering heart of humanity formed to 
itself such a conception out of its own sense of need. 
Poor helpless man felt himself an abandoned child, 
without a Father, in a scene of warring and contending 
forces. The mighty, mysterious, terrible God of nature 
was a being that he could not understand, felt unable 
to question. Job in his hour of anguish expressed the 
universal longing: 

" Oh that I knew where I might find him ! I would come even to 
his seat, I would order my cause before him, I would fill my mouth 
with arguments. Would he plead against me with his great power ? 
Nay, but he would put strength in me." 

And again : 

" He is not a man as I am that I should answer him, and that we 
should come together in judgment. Neither is there any Daysman 
that might lay his hand on both of us. " 

It was for this Mediator, both divine and human, 
who should interpret the silence of God to man, who 
should be his Word to his creatures, that all humanity 
was sighing. Therefore it was that the first vague 
promise was a seed of hope, not only in the Jewish 
race, but in all other nations of the earth. 

One of the earliest and most beautiful prophecies of 



88 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

the coming Messiah is from the heathen astrologer, 
Balaam : 
" Balaam the son of Beor saith, 

The man whose eyes are open, saith, 

He which heard the word of God 

And knew the knowledge of the Most High, 

Which saw the vision of the Almighty, 

Falling into a trance and having his eyes open : 

I shall see Him, but not now. 

I shall behold Him, but not nigh. 

There shall come a Star out of Jacob, 

A scepter shall rise out of Israel. 

Out of Jacob shall come He that shall have dominion !" 

Of late there has been discovered in Nineveh a large 
work on the system of magic of the Chaldee soothsayers, 
written on tiles of baked clay, in the "arrow-head" 
characters. Here we have a minute account of the 
Chaldeans — the astrologers and the sorcerers spoken of 
in Daniel — with specimens of their liturgic forms and 
invocations. M. Lenormant, who has issued a minute 
account of this work with translations of many parts of 
of it, gives an interesting account of the religious ideas 
of the Chaldees in the very earliest period of antiquity, 
as old or older than that of the soothsayer Balaam. 

He says the supreme divinity, whom they called Ea, 
was regarded as too remote and too vast to be ap- 
proached by human prayer, and that he was to be 
known only through the medium of another divinity, 
his first-begotten Son, to whom is given a name signify- 
ing the Benefactor of Man. The prayers and ascrip- 
tions to this divinity remind us of the Old Testament 
addresses to the Messiah. The Hebrew poet says : 

" Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, 
And the heavens are the work of thy hands." 



GENTILE PROPHECIES OF CHRIST. 89 

The ancient invocation upon the tiles of Nineveh 
addressed to the Mediator runs thus : 

" Great Lord of earth ! King of all lands, 
First-begotten Son of Ea, 
Director of heaven and earth, 
Most merciful among the gods, 
Thou who restorest the dead to life.'' 



We see here the reflection of a Being such as the 
cotemporaries of Abraham in the land of the Chaldees 
must have looked forward to — an image of that diffused 
and general faith which pervaded the world in the days 
when the patriarch was called to be the Father of a 
peculiar people. 

In the Zendavesta — begun about the age of Daniel — 
also are traces of the same Being, with prophecies of 
his future appearance on earth to restore the human 
race to peace and goodness. 

In one of the Zend books we have a passage strik- 
ingly like some of the prophetic parts of Daniel. As 
Nebuchadnezzar saw the future history of the world 
under the form of an image, made of four precious 
metals, so Zoroaster was made to see the same under 
the image of a tree in which four trunks proceed 
from a common root. The first was a golden, the 
second a silver, the third a steel, and the fourth an 
iron one. 

In the same manner as in Daniel, these trees are in- 
terpreted as successive monarchies of the earth. The 
last, the iron one, was to be the dominion of demons 
and dark powers of evil, and after it was to. come 
the Saviour, or Sosiosch (a Ze?id word), who was to 



90 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

bring in the restitution of all things from the power of 
evil, and the resurrection of the dead.* 

The same ideas were expressed in the Sibylline or- 
acles. The story of the sibyl who offered her books 
to Tarquin, in the early days of Rome, is known to 
every child who studies Roman history. From the 
remains of these writings, still extant, they appear to 
contain predictions of the world's future, much resem- 
bling those of Daniel and Isaiah. They predict the 
coming of a Great Deliverer of the human race, a mil- 
lennium of righteousness, a resurrection of the dead, 
and a Day of Judgment. 

About forty years before the birth of Christ, Virgil 
wrote his beautiful Eclogue of Pollio. The birthplace 
of Virgil was near the town of Cumae, where lived the 
Cumsean Sibyl, and her traditionary history and her 
writings must have deeply impressed his mind. Possibly 
he only thought of them as a poet thinks of a fine 
theme for the display of poetic imagery; and possibly 
he may have meant to make of this eclogue a com- 
plimentary prophecy of some patron among the power- 
ful of his times. But when we remember that it was 
published only about forty years before the birth of 
Christ, and that no other historical character corre- 
sponding to this prediction ever appeared, it becomes, 
to say the least, a remarkable coincidence. 

Bishop Lowth says that the mystery of this eclogue 
has never been solved, and intimates that he would 



* These passages are quoted and commented on by Hilgenfeld 
on the Apocalyptic Literature of the Hebrews, and Lucke on the 
Apocalypse of St. John. 



GENTILE PROPHECIES OF CHRIST. 91 

scarcely dare to express some of the suppositions which 
it has inspired. 

May not Virgil, like Balaam, have been carried be- 
yond himself in the trance of poetic inspiration, and 
seen afar the "Star" that should arise out of Israel? 
He too might have exclaimed, 

" I shall see him, but not now. 
I shall behold him, but not nigh." 

The words of Virgil have a fire and fervor such 
as he seems to have had in no other composition, as 
he sings : 

" The last age of the Cumsean song is come. 
The great cycle of ages hastens to a new beginning. 
Now, too, returns the reign of Justice. 
The golden age of Saturn now returns. 
While thou, Pollio, art consul, 
This glory of our age shall make his appearance. 
The great months begin to roll. 
He shall partake of the life of the gods, 
And rule the peaceful world with his father's virtues." 

Then follow a profusion of images of peace and 
plenty that should come to the world in the reign of 
this hero. All poisonous and hurtful things shall die ; 
all rare and beautiful ones shall grow and abound; 
there shall be no more toil, no more trouble. Then, 
with a fine burst of imagery, the poet represents the 
Fates themselves as singing, to the whirring music of 
their spindles, a song of welcome : 

" Ye ages, hasten ! 
Dear offspring of the gods, set forward on thy way to highest 

honors ; 
The time is at hand. 
See, the world with its round weight bows to thee. 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



To thee bow the earth, the regions of the sea and heaven sublime. 
See how all things rejoice at the approach of this age ! 
O that my life might last to see and sing thy deeds !" 

The close of this eclogue has a mysterious tender- 
ness. The poet predicts that this sublime personage, 
for whom the world is waiting, should be born amidst 
the afflictions of his parents and under a cloud of 
poverty and neglect : 

" Come, little boy, and know thy mother with a smile. 
Come, little boy, on whom thy parents smile not, 
Whom no god honors with a table, 
No goddess with a cradle. " 

It would seem as if the sensitive soul of Virgil, in the 
ecstacy of poetic inspiration, acquired a vague clair- 
voyance of that scene at Bethlehem when there was no 
room for Joseph and Mary at the inn, and the Heir 
of all things lay in a manger, outcast and neglected. 

Not in Virgil alone, but scattered also here and there 
through all antiquity do we find vague, half prophetic 
aspirations after the Divine Teacher who should in- 
terpret God to man, console under the sorrows of 
life, and charm away the fears of death. In the 
Phsedo, when Socrates is comforting his sorrowful 
disciples in view of his approaching death, and set- 
ting before them the probabilities of a continued 
life beyond the grave, one of them tells him that 
they believe while they hear him, but when he is 
gone their doubts will all return, and says, "Where 
shall we find a charmer then to disperse our fears?" 
Socrates answers that such a Charmer will yet arise, 
and bids his disciples seek him in all lands of the 
earth. Greece, he says, is wide, and there are many 



GENTILE PROPHECIES OF CHRIST. 93 

foreign lands and even barbarous countries in which 
they should travel searching for Him, for there is 
nothing for which they could more reasonably spend 
time and money. 

And in the discourse of Socrates with Alcibiades, as 
given by Plato, the great philosopher is represented as 
saying, " We must wait till One shall teach us our 
duty towards gods and men." 

Alcibiades asks, " When, O Socrates, shall that time 
come, and who will be the Teacher? Most happy 
should I be to see this man, whoever he is." The 
Sage replies, " He is One who is concerned for thee. 
He feels for -thee an admirable regard." 

When one reads these outreachings for an unknown 
Saviour in the noblest minds of antiquity, it gives pathos 
and suggestive power to that emotion which our Lord 
manifested only a few days before his death, when 
word was brought him that there were certain Greeks 
desiring to see him. When the message was brought 
to him he answered with a burst of exultation, " The 
hour is come that the Son of man should be glori- 
fied! Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth 
forth much fruit, and I, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me !" 

He was indeed the " Teacher" who had been "con- 
cerned" for Alcibiades, who had cared for Socrates. 
He was the " Charmer" whom Socrates bade his dis- 
ciples seek above all things. He was the unknown 
bringer of good for whom Virgil longed. He was the 
"Star" of Balaam, the "Benefactor" of the Chaldee 



94 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

astrologers, the " Saviour " predicted by the Persian 
Zoroaster. He was, it is true, the Shepherd of Israel, 
but he had a heart for the "other sheep not of this 
fold," who were scattered through all nations of the 
earth. He belonged not to any nation, but to the 
world, and hence aptly and sublimely did the last 
prophecy proclaim, " The desire of all nations shall 
come!" 




%\z Cjraraer, 



Socrates ; " However, you and Simmias appear to me as if you wished to sift 
this subject more thoroughly, and to be afraid, like children, lest, on the soul's 
departure from the body, winds should blow it away." 

Upon this Cebes said, u Endeavor to teach us better, Socrates. Perhaps there 
is a childish spirit in our breast that has such a dread. Let us endeavor to per- 
suade him not to be afraid of death, as of hobgoblins." 

" You must charm him every day," said Socrates, " until you have quieted his 
fears." 

'■ But whence, O Socrates," he asked, "can we procure a skillful charmer for 
such a case, now that you are about to leave us ? " 

"Greece is wide, Cebes." he said, u and in it surely there are skillful men ; 
and there are many barbarous nations, all of which you should search, seeking 
such a charmer, sparing neither money nor toil." — Last words of Socrates, as 
narrated by Plato in the Fhoedo. 




E need that charmer, for our hearts are sore 
With longings for the things that may not be, 
Faint for the friends that shall return no more, 
Dark with distrust, or wrung with agony. 

What is this life? and what to us is death? 

Whence came we? whither go? and where are those 
Who, in a moment stricken from our side, 

Passed to that land of shadow and repose? 

Are they all dust? and dust must we become? 

Or are they living in some unknown clime? 
Shall we regain them in that far-off home, 

And live anew beyond the waves of time ? 

O man divine ! on thee our souls have hung ; 

Thou wert our teacher in these questions high ; 
But ah ! this day divides thee from our side, 

And veils in dust thy kindly-guiding eye. 

95 



9 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



; Where is that Charmer whom thou bidst us seek? 

On what far shores may his sweet voice be heard ? 
When shall these questions of our yearning souls 
Be answered by the bright Eternal Word ?" 

So spake the youth of x\thens, weeping round, 
When Socrates lay calmly down to die ; 

So spake the sage, prophetic of the hour 

When earth's fair Morning Star should rise on high. 

They found Him not, those youths of noble soul ; 

Long seeking, wandering, watching on life's shore, 
Reasoning, aspiring, yearning for the light, — 

Death came and found them doubting as before. 

But years passed on ; and lo ! the Charmer came, 
Pure, simple, sweet, as comes the silver dew, 

And the world knew him not, — he walked alone, 
Encircled only by his trusting few. 

Like the Athenian sage, rejected, scorned, 

Betrayed, condemned, his day of doom drew nigh ; 

He drew his faithful few more closely round, 
And told them that his hour was come to die. 

Let not your heart be troubled," then He said, 
" My Father's house hath mansions large and fair ; 
I go before you to prepare your place, 
I will return to take you with me there." 

And since that hour the awful foe is charmed, 
And life and death are glorified and fair ; 

Whither He went we know, the way we know, 
And with firm step press on to meet him there. 




VII. 




Cjf* f§ftfett fairs d C|rat 

NE great argument for the Divine origin of 
the mission of Jesus is its utter unlikeness 
to the wisdom and ways of this world. From 
beginning to end, it ignored and went contrary to all 
that human schemes for power would have advised. 

It was first announced, not to the great or wise, 
but to the poor and unlettered. And when the holy 
child, predicted by such splendid prophecies, came 
and had been adored by the Shepherd and Magi, had 
been presented in the temple and blessed by Simeon 
and Anna — what then? Suddenly he disappears from 
view. He is gone, no one knows whither — hid in a 
distant land. 

In time the parents return and settle in an obscure 
village. Nobody knows them, nobody cares for them, 
and the child grows up as the prophet predicted, 
"As a tender plant, a root out of dry ground;" the 
lonely lily of Nazareth. 

And then there were thirty years of silence, when 
nobody thought of him and nobody expected anything 
from him. There was time for Zacharias and Elisa- 
beth and Simeon and Anna to die ; for the shepherds 
to cease talking of the visions ; for the wise ones of 

97 



98 FOOTSTEPS OF THE M ASTER. 

the earth to say, " Oh, as to that child, it was noth- 
ing at all ! He is gone. Nobody knows where he is. 
You see it has all passed by — a mere superstitious ex- 
citement of a few credulous people." 

And during these hidden years what was Jesus do- 
ing ? We have no record. It was said by the Apostle 
that " in all respects it behooved him to be made like 
his brethren.' ' Before the full splendor of his divine 
gifts and powers descended upon him, it was necessary 
that he should first live an average life, such as the 
great body of human beings live. For, of Christ as 
he was during the three years of his public life, it 
could not be said that he was in all respects in our 
situation or experiencing our trials. He had unlimited 
supernatural power ; he could heal the sick, raise the 
dead, hush the stormy waters, summon at his will 
legions of angels. A being of such power could not 
be said to understand exactly the feelings of our 
limitations and weaknesses. But those years of power 
were only three in the life of our Lord ; for thirty 
years he chose to live the life of an obscure human 
being. 

Jesus prepared for his work among men by passing 
through the quiet experience of a workingman in the 
lower orders. The tradition of the church is that 
Joseph, being much older than Mary, died while Jesus 
was yet young, and thus the support of his mother 
devolved upon him. Overbeck has a very touching 
picture in which he represents Joseph as breathing 
his last on the bosom of Jesus; it is a sketch full of 
tenderness and feeling-. 



THE HIDDEN YEARS OF CHRIST. 99 

What balance of mind, what reticence and self-control, 
what peace resulting from deep and settled faith, is 
there in this history, and what a cooling power it must 
have to the hot and fevered human heart that burns 
in view of the much that is to be done to bring the 
world right ! 

Nothing was ever so strange, so visionary, to all 
human view so utterly and ridiculously hopeless of suc- 
cess, as the task that Jesus meditated during the thirty 
years when he was quietly busy over his carpenter's 
bench in Nazareth. Hundreds of years before, the 
Prophet Daniel saw, in a dream, a stone cut out of 
the mountain without hands, growing till it filled the 
earth. Thus the ideal kingdom of Jesus grew in the 
silence and solitude of his own soul till it became a 
power and a force before which all other forces of 
the world have given way. The Christian religion 
was the greatest and most unprecedented reform ever 
introduced. 

In the present age of the world, the whole movement 
and uneasiness and convulsion of what is called pro- 
gress comes from the effort to adjust existing society 
to the principles laid down by Jesus. The Sermon 
on the Mount was, and still is, the most disturbing 
and revolutionary document in the world. 

This being the case, what impresses us most in the 
character of Jesus, as a reformer, is the atmosphere 
of peacefulness that surrounded him, and in which he 
seeemed to live and move and have his being. 

Human beings as reformers are generally agitated, 
hurried, impatient. Scarcely are the spirits of the 



ioo FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

prophets subject to the prophets. They are liable to 
run before the proper time and season, to tear open 
the bud that ought to unfold ; they become nervous, 
irascible, and lose mental and physical health : and, if 
the reform on which they have set their heart fails, 
they are overwhelmed with discouragement and tempt- 
ed to doubt Divine Providence. 

Let us now look at Jesus. How terrible was the 
state of the world at the time when he began to re- 
flect upon it in his unfolding youth ! How much was 
there to be done! What darkness, cruelty, oppression, 
confusion ! Yet he, knowing that that was the work 
of reorganizing, showed no haste. Thirty years was 
by Jewish law the appointed time at which a religious 
teacher should commence his career. Jesus apparently 
felt no impulse to antedate this period ; one incident 
alone, in his childhood, shows him carried away be- 
yond himself by the divine ardor which filled his soul. 

Even then, his answers to his mother showed the con- 
sciousness of a divine and wonderful mission such as 
belonged only to one of the human race, and it is im- 
mediately added, "And he went down to Nazareth and 
was subject to them." Eighteen years now passed away 
and nothing was known of the enthusiastic spirit. When 
he appears in the synagogue at Nazareth, he is spoken 
of simply as " the carpenter." " How knoweth this man 
letters?" was the cry of his townsmen. 

Nothing shows more strongly the veiled and hidden 
and perfectly quiet life that Jesus had been leading 
among them. He had been a carpenter, not a teacher. 
The humble, calm, unobtrusive life of a good mechanic, 



THE HIDDEN YEARS OE CHRIST. 101 

who does every clay's duty in its time and place, is 
not a thing that calls out any attention in a commu- 
nity. There are many followers of Jesus in this world 
who are living the same silent, quiet life, who would 
not be missed in the great world if they were gone, 
who, being always in place and time, and working 
without friction or jar, come to be as much disre- 
garded as the daily perfect work of nature. 

The life of Jesus must also have been a silent one. 
Of all the things that he must have been capable of 
saying we find not one recorded. And the wonder 
of his townsmen at his capacity of speech shows that 
there had been no words spoken by him before to 
accustom them to it. 

In our Saviour's public career we are surprised at 
nothing so much as his calmness. He was never in 
haste. His words have all the weight of deliberation, 
and the occasions when he refrains from speech are 
fully as remarkable as the things he says. 

There seems to be about him none of the wearying 
anxiety as to immediate results, none of the alterna- 
tions of hope and discouragement that mark our course. 
He had faith in God, whose great plan he was working, 
whose message he came to deliver, and whose times 
and seasons he strictly regarded. So, too, did he regard 
the mental and spiritual condition of the imperfect 
ones by whom he was surrounded. " I have many 
things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now," 
he said even to his disciples. When their zeal tran- 
scended his, and they longed to get hold of the thunder- 
bolts and call down fire from heaven, his grave and 



102 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

steady rebuke recalled them : " Ye know not what 
manner of spirit ye are of." 

We see his disciples excited, ardent ; now coming 
back with triumph to tell how even the devils were 
subject to them — now forbidding one to cast out devils 
because he followed not them — now contending who 
should be greatest: — and among them sits the Master, 
lowly, thoughtful, tranquil, with the little child on his 
knee, or bending to wash the feet of a disciple, the 
calmest, sweetest, least assuming of them all. 

This should be the model of all Christian reformers. 
He that believeth shall not make haste is the true motto 
of Christian reform. 

And these great multitudes, to whose hands no spe- 
cial, individual power is given — they are only minute 
workers in a narrower sphere. Daily toils, small econ- 
omies, the ordering of the material cares of life, are 
all their lot. Before them in their way they can see 
the footsteps of Jesus. We can conceive that in the 
lowly path of his life all his works were perfect, that 
never was a nail driven or a line laid carelessly, and 
that the toil of that carpenter's bench was as sacred 
to him as his teachings in the temple, because it was 
duty. 

Sometimes there is a sadness and discontent, a re- 
pressed eagerness for some higher sphere, that invades 
the minds of humble workers. Let them look unto 
Jesus, and be content. All they have to do is to be 
"faithful over a few things," and in His own time he 
will make them "ruler over many things." 



Ctje Jahttht§ Discijrle. 



" When He putteth forth His own sheep, He goeth before them." — St. John x.,4. 




HAT, weaned out with half a life? 
Scared with this smooth unbloody strife ? 
Think where thy coward hopes had flown 
Had Heaven held out the Martyr's crown. 

How couldst thou hang upon the cross, 
To whom a weary hour is loss? 
Or how the thorns and scourging brook, 
Who shrinkest from a scornful look ? 

Yet, ere thy craven spirit faints, 
Hear thine own King, the King of saints, 
Though thou wert toiling in the grave 
'Tis He can cheer thee, He can save. 

He is th' eternal mirror bright 
Where angels view the Father's light; 
And yet in him the simplest swain 
May read his homely lesson plain. 

Early to quit his home on earth 
And claim His high celestial birth; 
Alone with His true Father found 
Within the Temple's solemn sound :— 

Yet in meek duty to abide 

For many a year at Mary's side, 

103 



104 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Nor heed though restless spirits ask, 
" What ! hath the Christ forgot his task ?" 

All but Himself to heal and save, 
Till, ripened for the Cross and grave, 
He to His Father gently yield 
The breath that our redemption seal'd. 

This is thy pastoral course, O Lord 
Till we be saved and thou adoied — 
Thy course and ours ; — but who are they 
Who follow on the narrow way ? 

And yet of thee from year to year 
The Church's solemn chant we hear, 
As from thy cradle to thy throne 
She swells her high heart-cheering tone. 

Listen, ye pure white-robed souls, 
Whom in her lists she now enrolls, 
And gird ye for your high emprise 
By these her thrilling minstrelsies. 

And wheresoe'er in earth's wide field 
Ye lift for Him the red-cross shield, 
Be this your song, your joy and pride — 
" Our Champion went before and died." 



-Keble's Christian Year 






"# Iters, int hzutt\ of Cfw merafuUg to §tnx us; 
nno grant ijjat fox la tofyom fyavc jjagt yibzn ran \mxty 
azmz to prag, mag, bg iljg wijjijfg aib-, hrjc fofenbtfr aito 
tomfoxtzo in all imngerg nno afrtarstig, ijjrowglj $£sus 
Cjjrist our Itorltr. gwtnx." 



"Ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken 
UNTO YOU. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye 

SHALL SEARCH FOR ME WITH ALL YOUR HEART. 



VIII. 



C|e f rajmr-lTife of $ama» 




HE Bible presents us with the personality of 
a magnificent Being — the only-begotten Son 
of God — who, being in the form of God and 
without robbery equal with God, emptied himself of 
his glory and took upon him the form of a servant; 
and, being found in fashion as a man, humbled him- 
self and became obedient to death — even the death 
of the cross. 

This great Being we are told entered the race of 
mortality, divested of those advantages which came from 
his divine origin, and assuming all those disadvantages 
of limitation and dependence which belong to human 
beings. The apostle says, " It behooved him in all 
respects to be made like unto his brethren." His lot 
was obedience— dependence upon the Father — and he 
gained victories by just the means which are left to 
us — faith and prayer. 

Now, there are many good people whose feeling 
about prayer is something like this : " I pray because 

105 



106 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

I am commanded to, not because I feel a special 
need or find a special advantage in it. In my view 
we are to use our intellect and our will in discover- 
ing duties and overcoming temptations, quite sure 
that God will, of course, aid those who aid them- 
selves." This class of persons look upon all protracted 
seasons of prayer and periods spent in devotion as so 
much time taken from the active duties of life. A 
week devoted to prayer, a convention of Christians 
meeting to spend eight or ten days in exercises purely 
devotional, would strike them as something excessive 
and unnecessary, and tending to fanaticism. 

If ever there was a human being who could be 
supposed able to meet the trials of life and overcome 
its temptations in His own strength, it must have 
been Jesus Christ. 

But his example stands out among all others, and 
-he is shown to us as peculiarly a man of prayer. 
The wonderful quietude and reticence of spirit in 
which he awaited the call of his Father to begin his 
great work has already been noticed. He waited 
patiently, living for thirty years the life of a common 
human being of the lower grades of society, and not 
making a single movement to display either what may 
be called his natural gifts, of teaching, etc., or those 
divine powers which were his birthright. Having taken 
the place of a servant, as a servant he waited the Di- 
vine call. 

When that call came he consecrated himself to his 
great work by submitting to the ordinance of baptism. 
We are told that as he went up from the waters of 



THE PRAYER-LIFE OF JESUS. 107 

baptism, praying, the heavens were opened and the 
Holy Ghost descended upon him, and a voice from 
heaven said, " Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am 
well pleased." 

Might we not think that now the man Jesus Christ 
would feel fully prepared to begin at once the work to 
which God so visibly called him ? But no. The di- 
vine Spirit within him led to a still farther delay. More 
than a month's retreat from all the world's scenes and 
ways, a period of unbroken solitude, was devoted to 
meditation and prayer. 

If Jesus Christ deemed so much time spent in prayer 
needful to his work, what shall we say of ourselves? 
Feeble and earthly, with hearts always prone to go 
astray, living in a world where everything presses us 
downward to the lower regions of the senses and pas- 
sions, how can we afford to neglect that higher com- 
munion, those seasons of divine solitude, which were 
thought necessary by our Master? It was in those 
many days devoted entirely to communion with God 
that he gained strength to resist the temptations of 
Satan, before which we so often fall. Whatever we 
may think of the mode and manner of that mysterious 
account of the temptations of Christ, it is evident that 
they were met and overcome by the spiritual force 
gained by prayer and the study of God's word. 

But it was not merely in this retirement of forty 
days that our Lord set us the example of the use of 
seasons of religious seclusion. There is frequent men- 
tion made in the gospels of his retiring for purposes 
of secret prayer. In the midst of the popularity and 



io8 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



success that attended his first beneficent miracles,, we 
are told by St. Mark that, " rising up a great while 
before day, he went out. into a solitary place and there 
prayed." His disciples went to look for him, and found 
him in his retirement, and brought him back with the 
message, "All men are seeking for thee." In Luke v., 
16, it is said: " He withdrew himself into the wilderness 
and prayed;" and on another occasion (Luke iv., 42), 
he says : " And when it was day, he departed and went 
into a desert place." Again, when preparing to take 
the most important step in his ministry, the choice of 
his twelve apostles, we read in Luke vi., 12 : "And it 
came to pass in those days that he went out into a 
mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to 
God ; and when it was day, he called unto him his 
disciples ; and of them he chose twelve, whom also he 
named apostles." 

It was when his disciples found him engaged in 
prayer, and listened for a little while to his devotions, 
that they addressed to him the petition, "Lord, teach 
us to pray." Might we not all, in view of his example, 
address to him the same prayer ? Surely if there is 
anything in which Christ's professed disciples need to 
learn of him it is in prayer. 

Not only in example but in teaching did he exhort 
to prayer. " Watch and pray " were words so often 
upon his lips that they may seem to be indeed the 
watchwords of our faith. He bids us retire to our 
closets and with closed door pray to our Father in 
secret. He says that men " ought always to pray and 
not to faint," though the answer be delayed. He 



THE PRAYER-LIFE OF JESUS. 



reasons from what all men feel of parental longings in 
granting the requests of their little children, and says, 
" If ye, being evil, are so ready to hear your children, 
how much more ready will your Father in heaven be to 
give good things to them that ask him." Nay, he uses a 
remarkable boldness in urging us to be importunate 
in presenting our requests, again and again, in the face 
of apparent delay and denial. He shows instances 
where even indifferent or unjust people are overcome 
by sheer importunity, and intimates how much greater 
must be the power of importunity — urgent, pressing 
solicitation — on a Being always predisposed to be- 
nevolence. 

By all these methods and illustrations our Lord in- 
cites us to follow his prayerful example, and to overcome, 
as he overcame, by prayer. The Christian Church felt 
so greatly the need of definite seasons devoted to 
religious retirement that there grew up among them 
the custom now so extensively observed in Christendom, 
q{ devoting forty days in every year to a special retreat 
from the things of earth, and a special devotion to the 
work of private and public prayer. Like all customs, 
even those originating in deep spiritual influences, this 
is too apt to degenerate into a mere form. Many 
associate no ideas with " fasting " except a change in 
articles of food. The true spiritual fasting, which 
consists in turning our eyes and hearts from the en- 
grossing cares and pleasures of earth and fixing them 
on things divine, is lost sight of. Our "forty days" 
are not like our Lord's, given to prayer and the study 
of God's Word. Nothing could make the period of 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



Lent so much of a reality as to employ it in a system- 
atic effort to fix the mind on Jesus. The history in the 
Gospels is so well worn that it often slips through the 
head without affecting the heart. 

But if, retiring into solitude for a portion of each 
day, we should select some one scene or trait or inci- 
dent in the life of Jesus, and with all the helps we 
can get seek to understand it fully, tracing it in the 
other evangelists, comparing it with other passages of 
Scripture, etc., we should find ourselves insensibly in- 
terested, and might hope that in this effort of our souls 
to understand him, Jesus himself would draw hear, as he 
did of old to the disciples on the way to Emmaus. 

This looking unto Jesus and thinking about him is 
a better way to meet and overcome sin than any 
physical austerities or spiritual self-reproaches. It is 
by looking at him, the apostle says, " as in a glass," 
that we are " changed into the same image, as from 
glory to glory." 




list's Call to ^ifomtttt. 



" Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place and rest awhile ; for there wert 
many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." — Mark vi., 31. 



ID the mad whirl of life, its dim confusion, 
Its jarring discords and poor vanity, 
Breathing like music over troubled waters, 
What gentle voice, O Christian, speaks to thee? 

It is a stranger, — not of earth or earthly ; 

By the serene deep fullness of that eye, — 
By the calm, pitying smile, the gesture lowly, — 

It is thy Saviour as he passeth by. 

" Come, come," he saith, " O soul oppressed and weary, 
Come to the shadows of my desert rest; 
Come walk with me far from life's babbling discords, 
And peace shall breathe like music in thy breast. 

" Art thou bewildered by contesting voices, — 
Sick to thy soul of party noise and strife? 
Come, leave it all and seek that solitude 
Where thou shalt learn of me a purer life. 

"When far behind the world's great tumult dieth, 
Thou shalt look back and wonder at its roar; 



112 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

But its far voice shall seem to thee a dream, 
Its power to vex thy holier life be o'er. 

" There shalt thou learn the secret of a power, 
Mine to bestow, which heals the ills of living ; 
To overcome by love, to live by prayer, 
To conquer man's worst evils by forgiving.'' 



-H. B. S. 





IX 



C|* Cmjriattmts & fma, 

INTIMATELY connected with the forty days 
of solitude and fasting is the mysterious story 
of the Temptation. 
We are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews that our 
Lord was exposed to a peculiar severity of trial in 
order that he might understand the sufferings and wants 
of us feeble human beings. " For in that he himself 
hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succor those 
who are tempted." We are to understand, then, that 
however divine was our Lord's nature in his pre-existent 
state, he chose to assume our weakness and our limita- 
tions, and to meet and overcome the temptations of 
Satan by just such means as are left to us — by faith 
and prayer and the study of God's Word. 

There are many theories respecting this remarkable 
history of the temptation. Some suppose the Evil 
Spirit to have assumed a visible form, and to have been 
appreciably present. But if we accept the statement we 
have quoted from the Epistle to the Hebrews, that our 
Lord was tempted in all respects as we are, it must have 



H4 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

been an invisible and spiritual presence with which he 
contended. The temptations must have presented them- 
selves to him, as to us, by thoughts injected into his 
mind. 

It seems probable that, of many forms of temptation 
which he passed through, the three of which we are told 
are selected as specimens, and if we notice we shall see 
that they represent certain great radical sources of trial 
to the whole human race. 

First comes the temptation from the cravings of ani- 
mal appetite. Perhaps hunger — the want of fobd and 
the weakness and faintness resulting from it — brings more 
temptation to sin than any other one cause. To supply 
animal cravings men are driven to theft and murder, and 
women to prostitution. The more fortunate of us, who 
are brought up in competence and shielded from want, 
cannot know the fierceness of this temptation — its driv- 
ing, maddening power. But he who came to estimate 
our trials, and to help the race of man in their tempta- 
tions, chose to know what the full force of the pangs of 
hunger were, and to know it in the conscious possession 
of miraculous power which could at any moment have 
supplied them. To have used this power for the supply 
of his wants would have been at once to abandon that 
very condition of trial and dependence which he came 
to share with us. It was a sacred trust, not given for 
himself but for the world. It was the Very work he 
undertook, to bear the trials which his brethren bore as 
they were called to bear them, with only such helps as 
it might please the Father to give him in his own time 
and way. 



THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS. 115 

So when the invisible tempter suggested that he might 
at once relieve this pain and gratify this craving, he 
answered simply that there was a higher life than the 
animal, and that man could be upborne by faith in God 
even under the pressure of utmost want. " Man shall 
not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro- 
■ceedeth out of the mouth of God." How many poor 
suffering followers of Christ, called to forsake the 
means of livelihood for conscience' sake, have been 
obliged to live as Christ did on the simple promise of 
God, and to wait. Such sufferers may feel that they 
are not called to this trial by one ignorant of its na- 
ture or unsympathetic with their weakness. And the 
same consolation applies to all who struggle with the 
lower wants of our nature in any form. Christ's pity 
and sympathy are for them. 

All who struggle with animal desires in any form, 
which duty forbids them to gratify, may remember that 
God has given them an Almighty Saviour, who, having 
suffered, is able to succor those that are tempted. 

The second trial was no less universal. It was the 
temptation to use his sacred and solemn gifts from God 
for purposes of personal ostentation and display. " Why 
not," suggests the tempter, " descend from the pinnacle 
of the temple upborne by angels ? How striking a mani- 
festation of the power of the Son of God !" To this 
came the grave answer, " Thou shalt not tempt the Lord 
thy God,'' — by needlessly incurring a danger which 
would make miraculous deliverance necessary. 

Is no one in our day put to this test? Is not the 
young minister at God's altar, to whom is given elo- 



Ii6 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

quence and power over the souls of men, in danger of 
this temptation to theatric exhibitions — ostentatious 
display of self — this seeking for what is dramatic and 
striking, rather than what is for God's service and 
glory ? Whoever is entrusted with power of any kind 
or in any degree is tempted to use it selfishly rather 
than divinely. To all such the Lord's temptation and 
resistance of it gives assurance of help if help be 
sought. 

But finally came the last, the most insidious tempta- 
tion, and its substance seemed to be this: "Why not 
use these miraculous gifts to make a worldly party? 
Why not flatter the national vanity of the Jews, excite 
their martial spirit, lead them to a 'course of successful 
revolt against their masters, and then of brilliant con- 
quest, and seize upon all the kingdoms of the world and 
the glory of them ? To be sure, this will require making 
concession here and there to the evil passions of men, 
but when the supreme power is once gained all shall go 
right. Why this long, slow path of patience and self- 
denial? Why this conflict with the world? Why the 
cross and the grave ? Why not the direct road of power, 
using the worldly forces first, and afterwards the spirit- 
ual?" This seems to be a free version of all that is 
included in the proposition : " All this power will I give 
thee, and the glory of it : for that is delivered unto me 
and to whomsoever I will I give it. If, therefore, thou 
wilt worship me all shall be thine." 

The indignant answer of Jesus shows with what 
living energy he repelled every thought of the least 
concession to evil, the lea^t advantage to be gained by 



THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS. 117 

following or allowing the corrupt courses of this world. 
He would not natter the rich and influential.. He would 
not conceal offensive truth. He would seek the society 
of the poor and despised. He taught love of enemies 
in the face of a nation hating their enemies and longing 
for revenge. He taught forgiveness and prayer, while 
they were longing for battle and conquest. He blessed 
the meek, the sorrowful, the merciful, the persecuted for 
righteousness, instead of the powerful and successful. 
If he had been willing to have been such a king as the 
Scribes and Pharisees wanted they would have adored 
him and fought for him. But because his kingdom was 
not of this world they cried: "Not this man, but Bar- 
abbas!" It is said that after this temptation the 
Devil departed from him "for a season." But all 
through his life, in one form or another, that tempta- 
tion must have been suggested to him. 

When he told his apostles that he was going up to 
Jerusalem to suffer and to die, Peter, it is said, re- 
buked him with earnestness : " That be far from thee, 
Lord; such things shall not happen to thee." 

Jesus instantly replies, not to Peter, but to the In- 
visible Enemy who through Peter's affection and am- 
bition is urging the worldly and self-seeking course 
upon him : " Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an 
offense unto me. Thou savorest not the things that 
be of God but of man." 

We are told that the temptation of Christ was so 
real that he suffered, being tempted. He knew that 
he must disappoint the expectations of all his friends 
who had set their hearts on the temporal kingdom, 



Il8 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

that he was leading them on step by step to a season 
of unutterable darkness of sorrow. The cross was 
bitter to him, in prospect as in reality, but never for 
a moment did he allow himself to swerve from it. As 
the time drew near, he said, " Now is my soul 
troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from 
this hour? But, for this cause came I unto this 
hour; — Father ; glorify thy name!" 

Is not this life-long temptation which Christ over- 
came one that meets us all every day and hour? To 
live an unworldly life ; never to seek place or power or 
wealth by making the least sacrifice of conscience or 
principle ; is it easy ? is it common ? Yet he who chose 
rather to die on the cross than to yield in the slightest 
degree his high spiritual mission can feel for our temp- 
tations and succor us even here. 

The apostle speaks of life as a race set before us, 
which we are to win by laying aside every impedi- 
ment and looking steadfastly unto Jesus, who, " for 
the joy that was set before him, endured the cross.'' 
Our victories over self are to be gained not so much 
by self-reproaches and self-conflicts as by the enthu- 
siasm of looking away from ourselves to Him who 
has overcome for us. Our Christ is not dead, but 
alive forevermore ! A living presence, ever near to 
the soul that seeks salvation from sin. And to the 
struggling and the tempted he still says, " Look unto 
me, and be ye saved." 



"Umrfekjj rata fwas" 



Hebrews 12 : 2. 



^Y various maxims, forms and rules, 
C| That pass for wisdom in the schools, 
Jj I strove my passions to restrain ; 



But all my efforts prov'd in vain. 

But since the Saviour I have known, 
My rules are all reduced to one : 
I keep my Lord by faith in view, 
Which strength supplies, and motive too. 

I see him lead a suff'ring life, 
Patient amidst reproach and strife, 
And from this pattern courage take 
To bear and suffer for his sake. 



Upon the cross I see him bleed, 
And by the sight from guilt am freed 
This sight destroys the life of sin, 
And quickens heav'nly life within. 

To look to Jesus as he rose 
Confirms my faith, disarms my foes ; 

119 



120 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



Satan and shame are overcome 
By pointing, to my Saviour's tomb. 

Exalted on his glorious throne 
I see him make my cause his own ; 
Then all my anxious cares subside, 
For Jesus lives, and will provide. 



-Dr. John Newton, Olney Hymn Book, 




X. 



•nr Itmrft's §ifrk 




HE life of Jesus, regarded from a mere human 
point of view, presents an astonishing problem. 
An obscure man in an obscure province has 
revolutionized the world. Every letter and public docu- 
ment of the most cultured nations dates from his birth, 
as a new era. How was this man educated ? We find 
he had no access to the Greek and Roman literature. 
Jesus was emphatically a man of one book. That book 
was the Hebrew Scriptures, which we call the Old 
Testament. The Old Testament was his Eible, and this 
single consideration must invest it with undying interest 
for us. 

We read the Bible which our parents read. We see, 
perhaps, pencil-marks here and there, which show what 
they loved and what helped and comforted them in 
the days of their life-struggle, and the Bible is dearer 
to us on that account. Then, going backward along 
the bright pathway of the sainted and blessed who 
lived in former ages, the Bible becomes diviner to us 
for their sake. The Bible of the Martyrs, the Bible of 
the Waldenses, the Bible of Luther and Calvin, of our 
Pilgrim Fathers, has a double value. 

121 



122 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

I have in my possession a very ancient black-letter 
edition of the Bible printed in 1522, more than three 
hundred years ago. In this edition many of the Psalms 
have been read and re-read, till the paper is almost 
worn away. Some human heart, some suffering soul, 
has taken deep comfort here. If to have been the 
favorite, intimate friend of the greatest number of 
hearts be an ambition worthy of a poet, David has 
gained a loftier place than any poet who ever wrote. 
He has lived next to the heart of men, and women, 
and children, of all ages, in all climes, in all times 
and seasons, all over the earth. They have rejoiced 
and wept, prayed and struggled, lived and died, with 
David's words in their mouths. His heart has become 
the universal Christian heart, and will ever be, till 
earth's sorrows, and earth itself, are a vanished dream. 

It is too much the fashion of this day to speak slight- 
ingly of the Old Testament. Apart from its grandeur, 
its purity, its tenderness and majesty, the Old Testa- 
ment has this peculiar interest to the Christian, — it 
was the Bible of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

As a man, Jesus had a human life to live, a human 
experience to undergo. For thirty silent }^ears he was 
known among men only as a carpenter in Nazareth, 
and the Scriptures of the Old Testament were his daily 
companions. When he emerges into public life, we 
find him thoroughly versed in the Scriptures. Allu- 
sions to them are constant, through all his discourses; 
he continually refers to them as writings that reflect 
his own image. " Search the Scriptures," he says, " for 
they are they that testify of me." 



OUR LORD'S BIBLE. 123 

The Psalms of David were to Jesus all and more 
than they can be to any other son of man. 

In certain of them he saw himself and his future 

life, his trials, conflicts, sufferings, resurrection and final 

triumph foreshadowed. He quoted them to confound 

his enemies. When they sought to puzzle him with 

perplexing questions he met them with others equally 

difficult, drawn from the Scriptures. He asks them, 

" What think ye of the Messiah ? whose son is he ? They say 
unto him, the Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth 
David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, 
Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine- enemies thy footstool ? 
If David then call him Lord, how is he his son ?■" 

So, when they ask the question, ''Which is the 
greatest commandment of all?" he answers by placing 
together two passages in the Old Testament, the one 
commanding supreme love to God and the other 
impartial love to man's neighbor. The greatest com- 
mandment of all nowhere stands in the Old Testament 
exactly as Jesus quotes it, the first part being found in 
Deuteronomy, vi. 5, and the second in Leviticus, xix. 18. 
This is a specimen of the exhaustive manner in which 
he studied and used the Scriptures. 

Our Saviour quotes often also from the prophets. In 
his first public appearance in his native village he goes 
into the synagogue and reads from Isaiah. When they 
question and disbelieve, he answers them by pointed 
allusions to the stories of Naaman the Syrian and the 
widow of Sarepta. When the Sadducees raise the ques- 
tion of a future life, he replies by quoting from the 
Pentateuch that God calls himself the God of Abraham, 
Isaac and Jacob, and God is not the God of the dead, 



124 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

but the God of the living, for all are alive to him. 
He cites the history of Jonah as a symbol of his 
own death and resurrection; and at the last moment 
of his trial before the High Priest, when adjured to 
say whether he be the Christ or not, he replies in 
words that recall the sublime predictions in the book 
of Daniel of the coming of Messiah to judgment. The 
prophet says : 

" I saw in my vision, and, behold, One like the Son of man came 
with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days ; and 
there was given unto hiai dominion and glory and a kingdom, that 
all people and nations and languages should serve him. His 
dominion is an everlasting dominion, that shall not pass away or be 
destroyed.'' 

When the High Priest of the Jews said to Jesus, " I 
adjure thee by the living God that thou tell us whether 
thou be Messiah or not," he answered, "I am; and 
hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the 
right hand of power and coming in the clouds of 
heaven." 

So much was the character of our Lord's teaching 
colored and impregnated by the writings of the Old 
Testament that it is impossible fully to comprehend 
Jesus without an intimate knowledge of them. To 
study the life of Christ without the Hebrew Scriptures 
is to study a flower without studying the plant from 
which it sprung, the root and leaves which nourished 
it. He continually spoke of himself as a Being destined 
to fulfill what had gone before. " Think not," he said, 
" that I am come to destroy the Law and the Prophets. 
I am not come to destroy but to fulfill." He frequently 
spoke of himself as of the order and race of Jewish 



OUR LORD'S BIBLE. 



prophets ; like them he performed symbolic acts which 
were visible prophecies, as when he knew his nation 
had finally rejected him he signified their doom by 
the awful sign of the blasted fig-tree. Through all 
the last days of Jesus, as his death approaches, we 
find continual references to the Old Testament proph- 
ecies, and quotations from them. 

And after his resurrection, when he appears to his 
Disciples, he "opens to them the Scriptures;" that 
talk on the way to Emmaus was an explanation of 
the prophecies, by our Lord himself. Would that it 
had been recorded! Would not our hearts too have 
" burned within us " ! 

Now, a book that was in life and in death so dear 
to our Lord, a book which he interpreted as from first 
to last a preparation for and prophecy of himself, can 
not but be full of interest to us Christians. When we 
read the Old Testament scriptures we go along a 
track that we know Jesus and his mother must often 
have trod together. The great resemblance in style 
between the Song of Mary and the Psalms of David 
is one of the few indications given in Holy Writ of 
the veiled and holy mystery of his mother's life. She 
was a poetess, a prophetess, one whose mind was capable 
of the highest ecstacy of inspiration. Let us read the 
Psalms again, with the thought in our mind that they 
were the comforters, the counselors of Jesus and Mary. 
What was so much to them cannot be indifferent to us. 

Nor did the Disciples and Apostles in the glow of 
the unfolding dispensation cease to reverence and 
value those writings so closely studied by their Lord. 



126 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

They did not speak of them as a worn out thing, 
that had "had its day," but they alluded to them 
with the affectionate veneration due to Divine oracles 
" The prophecy came not of old times by the will of 
man, but holy men of old spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost." Saint Paul congratulates Timo- 
thy that "from a child thou hast known the Holy 
Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto 
salvation," and adds: "all Scripture is given by in- 
spiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for 
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteous- 
ness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly 
furnished unto all good works." 

Even while the New Testament was being formed, 
its writers gave this complete testimony to the Old, 
as being able to make men "wise unto salvation," and 
to complete a man's spiritual education. This book, 
then, so dear to Christ and his Apostles, is something 
that should be dear to all Christians. Its study 'will 
enrich the soul. It is wonderful, mysterious, unique — 
there is no sacred book like it in the world; and in 
reading it we come nearer to Him who was foretold 
by it, and who when he came upon the earth found 
in it nourishment for his soul, instruction and spirit- 
ual refreshment by the wayside, comfort even in the 
extreme agonies of a dreadful death. However dear to 
us may be the story of his life in the Gospels and his 
teachings through his Apostles and their Epistles, let 
us in following his steps forget not " the Scriptures' 5 
which he bade us search, but diligently read and love 
the Bible of our Lord. 




XI. 

Cjprisfa Jfirat Smiton. 

HE first public sermon of the long-desired 
Messiah — his first declaration of his mission 
and message to the world — what was it ? 
It was delivered in his own city of Nazareth, where 
he had been brought up; it was on the Sabbath day; 
it was in the synagogue where he had always wor- 
shiped ; and it was in manner and form exactly in ac- 
cordance with the customs of his national religion. 

It had always been customary among the Jews to 
call upon any member of the synagogue to read a pas- 
sage from the book of the prophets; and the young man 
Jesus, concerning whom certain rumors had vaguely 
gone forth, was on the day in question called to 
take his part in the service. It was. a holy and sol- 
emn moment, when the long silence of years was to 
be broken. Jesus was surrounded by faces familiar 
from infancy. His mother, his brothers, his sisters, 
were all there; every eye was fixed upon him. The 
historian says : 

"And there was delivered unto him the book (or roll) of the 
127 



128 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Prophet Isaiah, and when he had unrolled the book he found the 
place were it is written (Isaiah lxi.), 

The spirit of the Lord is upon me. 

He hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor ; 

He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted ; 

To preach deliverance to the captives; 

The recovering of sight to the blind ; 

To set at liberty them that are bruised ; 

To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 

We may imagine the sweetness, the tenderness, the 
enthusiasm with which this beautiful announcement of 
his mission was uttered ; and when, closing the book, 
he looked round on the faces of his townsmen and 
acquaintances, and said, " This day is this scripture 
fulfilled in your ears," — it was an appeal of Heavenly 
love yearning to heal and to save those nearest and 
longest known. 

It would seem that the sweet voice, the graceful 
manner, at first charmed the rough audience ; there 
was a thrilling, vibrating power, that struck upon every 
heart. But those hearts were cold and hard. A Sa- 
viour from sin, a Comforter of sorrow, was not what 
they were looking for in their Messiah. They felt 
themselves good enough spiritually, in their observance 
of the forms of their law and ritual ; they were 
stupidly content with themselves and wanted no com- 
forter. What they did want was a brilliant military 
leader. They wanted a miracle-working supernatural 
Lord and Commander that should revenge their na- 
tional wrongs, conquer the Romans, and set the Jewish 
people at the head of the world. Having heard of 
the miracles of Christ in Cana and Capernaum, they 
had thought that perhaps he might prove this Leader, 



CHRIST'S FIRST SERMON. 129 

and if so, what a glory for Nazareth ! But they were in 
a critical, exacting mood; they were in their hearts call- 
ing for some brilliant and striking performance that 
should illuminate and draw attention to their town. 
Although the congregation were at first impressed and 
charmed with the gracious words and manner of the 
speaker, the hard, vulgar spirit of envy and carping 
criticism soon overshadowed their faces. 

" Who is this Jesus — is he not the carpenter ? What 
sign does he show ? Let him work some miracles 
forthwith, and we will see if we will believe." 

It was this disposition which our Lord felt in the 
atmosphere around him ; the language of souls uttered 
itself to him unspoken. He answered as he so often 
did to the feeling he saw in the hearts rather than 
the words of those around him. He said, " Ye will 
say to me, Physician, heal thyself. Do here in thy 
native place the marvels we have heard of in Caper- 
naum. I tell you a truth ; no prophet is accepted in 
his own country. There were many widows in Israel 
in the time of the Prophet Elijah, but he was sent 
only to a widow of Sarepta, a city of Sidon. There 
were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha, yet 
none of them was healed but Naaman the Syrian." 
It would seem as if our Lord was preparing to show 
them that he had a mission of love and mercy that 
could not be bounded by one village, or even by the 
chosen race of Israel, but was for the world. 

But the moment he spoke of favors and blessings 
given to the Gentiles the fierce national spirit flamed 
up ; the speech was cut short by a tumultuous uprising 



130 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

of the whole synagogue. They laid violent hands on 
Jesus and hurried him to the brow of the precipice on 
which their city was built, to cast him down head- 
long. But before the murder was consummated the 
calm majesty of Jesus had awed his persecutors. Their 
slackened hands dropped ; they looked one on another 
irresolute : and he, passing silently through the midst of 
them, went his way. He had offered himself to them as 
their Saviour from sin and from sorrow in the very full- 
ness of his heart. Heavenly tenderness and sweetness 
had stretched out its arms to embrace them, and been 
repulsed by sneering coldness and hard, worldly un- 
belief. 

Nazareth did not want Him ; and he left it. It 
was the first of those many rejections which He at 
last summed up when he said, "How often would I 
have gathered thy children, and ye would not." 

But, though he thus came to his own and his own 
received him not, yet the lovely and gracious procla- 
mation which he made then and there still stands 
unfading and beautiful as a rainbow of hope over this 
dark earth. The one Being sent into the world to 
represent the Invisible Father, and to show us the 
hidden heart and purposes of God in this mysterious 
life of ours, there declared that his mission was one 
of pity, of help, of consolation; that the poor, the 
braised, the desolate, the prisoner, might forever find 
a Friend in him. 

There are times when the miseries and sorrows of 
the suffering race of man, the groaning and travailing 



CHRIST'S FIRST SERMON. 131 

of this mysterious life of ours, oppress us, and our faith 
in God's love grows faint. 

Then let us turn our thoughts to this Divine Person- 
ality, Jesus, the anointed Son of God, and hear him 
saying now, as he said at Nazareth : 

" The spirit of the Lord is upon ME. 
He hath sent me to preach good tidings to the poor ; 
He hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, 
To preach deliverance to the captives, 
The recovering of sight to the blind, 
To set at liberty them that are bruised !" 

It is said of him in the Prophets, " He shall not fail 
nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the 
earth. The isles shall wait for his law. Our Redeemer 
is mighty ; the Lord of Hosts is his name — our Saviour, 
the Holy One of Israel!" 




CJj* f ok of Cljrat 



LOVE divine, who stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, 
On thee we cast our earth-born care. 
We smile at pain while Thou art near. 




Though long the weary way we tread, 
And sorrow crowns each lingering year, 

No path we shun, no darkness dread, 

Our hearts still whispering Thou art near ! 

When drooping pleasure turns to grief, 
And trembling faith is changed to fear, 

The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf, 
Shall softly tell us Thou art near. 

On thee we fling our burdening woe, 

O Love divine, forever dear ! 
Content to suffer while we know, 

Living or dying, Thou art near. 

— Oliver Wendell Holmes. 



132 



XII, 



C|e |rkufefnp *rf I-eatis* 




N turning our thoughts toward various scenes 
of our Lord's life, we are peculiarly affected 
with the human warmth and tenderness of 
his personal friendships. The little association of his 
own peculiar friends makes a picture that we need to 
study to understand him. 

St. John touchingly says : " Now when the time was 
come that Jesus should depart out of the world unto 
the Father, having loved his own which were in the 
world he loved them unto the end." When we think 
that all that we know of our Lord comes through these 
friends of his — the witnesses and recorders of his life 
and death — we shall feel more than ever what he has 
made them to us. Without them we should have had 
no Jesus. 

Our Lord, with all that he is to us, is represented to 
us through the loving hearts and affectionate records 
of these his chosen ones. It is amazing to think of, 
that our Lord never left to his church one line written 
by his own hand, and that all his words come to us 

i33 



134 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

transfused through the memories of his friends. How 
much to us, then, were these friendships of Jesus — 
how dear to us, for all eternity, these friends! 

We are told that immediately after the resurrec- 
tion there was an associated church of one hundred 
and twenty, who are characterized by Peter as "men 
that have companied with us all the time that the 
Lord Jesus went in and out among us." 

The account of how these friends were gathered to 
him becomes deeply interesting. St. John relates how, 
one day, John the Baptist saw Jesus walking by the 
Jordan in silent contemplation, and pointed him out 
to his disciples: "Behold the Lamb of God." And 
the two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus. 
Then Jesus turned and said, "What seek ye?" They 
said, "Master, where dwellest thou?" He answered, 
"Come and see." They came and saw where he 
dwelt, and abode with him that day. We learn from 
this that some of the disciples were those whose spir- 
itual nature had been awakened by John the Baptist, 
and who, under his teaching, were devoting them- 
selves to a religious life. We see the power of per- 
sonal attraction possessed by our Lord, which drew 
these simple, honest natures to 'himself. One of these 
men was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, and he 
immediately carried the glad tidings to his brother, 
"We have found the Messiah;" and he brought him 
to Jesus. Thus, by a sort of divine attraction, one 
brother and friend bringing another, the little band 
increased. Some were more distinctly called by the 
Master. Matthew, the tax-gatherer, sitting in his place 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 135 

of business, heard the words, " Follow me," and imme- 
diately rose up, and left all and followed him. James 
and John forsook their nets, in the midst of their 
day's labor, to follow him. In time, a little band of 
twelve left all worldly callings and home ties, to form 
a traveling mission family of which Jesus was the head 
and father. Others, both men and women, at times 
traveled with them and assisted their labors ; but these 
twelve were the central figures. 

These twelve men Jesus took to nurture and edu- 
cate as the expounders of the Christian religion and 
the organizers of the church. St. John, in poetic 
vision, sees the church as a golden city descending 
from God out of heaven, having twelve foundations, 
and in them the name of these twelve apostles of the 
Lamb. This plan of choosing honest, simple-hearted, 
devout men, and revealing himself to the world 
through their human nature and divinely educated 
conceptions, had in it something peculiar and original. 

When we look at the selection made by Christ of 
these own ones, we see something widely different from 
all the usual methods of earthly wisdom. They were 
neither the most cultured nor the most influential of 
their times. The majority of them appear to have 
been plain working men, from the same humble class 
in which our Lord was born. But the Judaean peasant, 
under the system of religious training and teaching 
given by Moses, was no stolid or vulgar character. He 
inherited lofty and inspiring traditions, a ritual stim- 
ulating to the spiritual and poetic nature, a system of 
ethical morality and of tenderness to humanity in ad- 



I $6 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

vance of the whole ancient world. A good Jew was 
frequently a man of spiritualized and elevated devotion. 
Supreme love to God and habitual love and charity 
to man were the essentials of his religious ideal. The 
whole system of Divine training and discipline to which 
the Jewish race had been subjected for hundreds of 
years had prepared a higher moral average to be chosen 
from than could have been found in any other nation. 

When Jesus began to preach, it was the best and 
purest men that most deeply sympathized and were 
most attracted, and from them he chose his intimate 
circle of followers — to train them as the future apostles 
of his religion. 

The new dispensation that Jesus came to introduce 
was something as yet uncomprehended on earth. It 
was a heavenly ideal, and these men — simple, pure- 
hearted and devout as they were — had no more con- 
ception of it than a deaf person has of music. It was 
a new manner of life, a new style of manhood, that 
was to constitute this kingdom of Heaven. It was no 
outward organization — no earthly glory. Man was to 
learn to live, not by force, not by ambition, not by 
pleasure, but by Love. Man was to become perfect in 
love as God is, so that loving and serving and suffering 
for others should become a fashion and habit in this 
world, where ruling and domineering and making others 
suffer had been the law. And Jesus took into his 
family twelve men to prepare them to be the apostles 
of this idea. His mode was more that of a mother 
than a father. He strove to infuse Himself into them 
by an embracing, tender, brooding love; ardent, self- 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. *37 



forgetful, delicate, refined. As we read the New Tes- 
tament narrative of the walks and talks of Jesus with 
these chosen ones, their restings by the wayside, their 
family conversations at evening, when he sat with some 
little child on his knee, when he listened to their say- 
ings, reproved their failings, settled their difficulties 
with one another, we can see no image by which to 
represent the Master but one of those loving, saintly 
mothers, who, in leading along their little flock, follow 
nearest in the footsteps of Jesus. 

Jesus trusted more to personal love, in forming his 
church, than to any other force. The power of love 
in developing the intellect and exciting the faculties is 
marked, even un the inferior animals. The dog is 
changed by tender treatment and affectionate care ; he 
becomes half human, and seems to struggle to rise out 
of the brute nature toward a beloved master. Rude 
human natures are correspondingly changed, and he 
who has great power of loving and exciting love may 
almost create anew whom he will. 

Jesus, that guest from brighter worlds, brought to 
this earth the nobler ideas of love, the tenderness, the 
truth, the magnanimity, that are infinite in the All- 
Loving. What of God could be expressed and under- 
stood by man He was, and St. John says of his ethereal 
gentleness and sweetness of nature: "The light shined 
in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it 
not." 

The varieties of natural character in this family of 
Jesus were such as to give most of the usual differences 
of human beings. The Master's object was to unite 



13 o FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

them to each other by such a love that they should 
move by a single impulse, as one human being, and 
that what was lacking in one might be made up by 
what was abundant in another. As He expressed it in 
his last prayer : " That they all may be one, as Thou, 
Father, art in me and I in Thee, that they also may be 
one in us : that the world may believe that Thou hast 
sent me." 

How diverse were the elements ! Simon Peter, self- 
confident, enthusiastic, prompt to speak and to decide. 
Thomas, slow and easily disheartened; always deficient 
in hope, and inclined to look upon the dark side, yet 
constant unto death in his affections. James and John, 
young men of the better class, belonging to a 
rich family, on terms of intimate aquaintance with the 
High Priest. Of these brothers, John is the idealist 
and the poet of the little band, but far from being 
the weak and effeminate character painters and poets 
have generally conceived. James and John were sur- 
named Boanerges — " sons of thunder." They were the 
ones who wanted to call down fire on the village that 
refused to receive their Lord. It was they who joined 
in the petition preferred by their mother for the seat 
of honor in the future kingdom. Young, ardent, im- 
petuous, full of fire and of that susceptibility to am- 
bition which belongs to high-strung and vivid organ- 
izations, their ardor was like a flame, that might scorch 
and burn as well as vivify. Then there was Matthew, 
the prosaic, the exact matter-of-fact man, whose call 
it was to write what critics have called the bodily gos- 
pel of our Lord's life, as it was that of John to present 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. x 39 

the inner heart of Jesus. These few salient instances 
show the strong and marked diversities of tempera- 
ment and character which Jesus proposed to unite 
into one whole, by an intense personal love which 
should melt down all angles, and soften asperities, and 
weld and blend the most discordant elements. It is 
the more remarkable that he undertook this task with 
men in mature life, and who had already been settled 
in several callings, and felt the strain of all those 
causes which excite the individual self-love of man. 

In guiding all these, we can but admire the perfect 
tolerance of the Master toward the wants of each 
varying nature. Tolerance for individual character is 
about the last Christian grace that comes to flower in 
family or church. Much of the raspings, and gratings, 
and complaints in family and church are from the 
habit of expecting and exacting that people should be 
what they never were made to be. Our Lord did not 
reprove Thomas for being a despondent doubter, 
beset by caution even when he most longed to believe. 
He graciously granted the extremest test which his 
hopeless nature required — he suffered him to put his 
finger in the print of the nails and to examine the 
wounded side ; and there is but a tender shadow of a 
reproof in what he said — " Thomas, because thou hast 
seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have 
not seen and yet have believed." In our day there are 
many disciples of Thomas, loving doubters, who would 
give their hearts' blood to fully believe in this risen 
Jesus; they would willingly put their hands in the 
print of the nails; and for them the Master has a 



140 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

spiritual presence and a convincing nearness, if they 
will but seek it. So, again, we notice the tender in- 
dulgence with which the self-confident Peter is listened 
to as he always interposes his opinion. We think we 
can see the Master listening with a grave smile, as a 
mother to her eldest and most self-confident boy. 
Sometimes he warmly commends, and sometimes he 
bears down on him with a sharpness of rebuke which 
would have annihilated a softer nature. When Peter 
officiously counsels worldly expediency, and the avoid- 
ance of the sufferings for which Jesus came, the reply 
is sharp as lightning — "Get thee behind me, Satan; 
thou art an offense unto me; for thou savorest not the 
things of God, but those that be of man." Yet we 
can see that the Master knows his man, and knows 
just how hard to strike. That eager, combative, self- 
confident nature not only can bear sharp treatment, 
but must have it at times, or never come to anything. 
We see Peter's self-asserting nature spring up after 
it, cheerful as ever. He yields to the reproof; but he 
is Peter still, prompt with his opinion at the next 
turn of affairs, and the Master would not for the world 
have him any body else but Peter. 

We see also that it was a manner of the master to 
deal with the conscience of his children, and rebuke 
their faults without exposing them to the censure of 
others. When he saw that the sin of covetousness was 
growing upon Judas, leading to dishonesty, he com- 
bated it by the most searching and stringent teaching. 
" Beware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth 
not in the things that he possesseth;" this and other 



THE FRIENDSHIPS OF JESUS. 141 

passages, which will be more fully considered in another 
chapter, would seem to have been all warnings to 
Judas, if he would but have listened. 

So, too, his tenderness for John, whom tradition 
reports to have been the youngest of the disciples, 
marked a delicate sense of character. To lean on his 
bosom was not sought by Matthew or Thomas, though 
both loved him supremely ; it fell to the lot of John, — as 
in a family flock, where one, the youngest and tenderest, 
is always found silently near the mother; the others 
smile to see him always there, and think it well. There 
are in St. John's narrative touches of that silent 
accord between him and Jesus> that comprehension 
without words, which comes between natures strung 
alike to sympathy. To him Jesus commended his 
mother, as the nearest earthly substitute for himself. 
Yet, after all, when for this one so dear, so accordant 
with his own personal feelings, a request was made for 
station and honor in the heavenly kingdom, he 
promptly refused. His personal affection for his friends 
was to have no undue influence in that realm of things 
which belonged to the purely Divine disposal. " The 
kingdom of heaven is within you," he taught ; and John's 
place in the spiritual domain must depend upon John's 
own spirit. 

There is one trait in the character of these chosen 
disciples of Christ which is worth a special thought. 
They were not, as we have seen, in any sense re- 
markable men intellectually, but they had one prep- 
aration for the work for which Jesus chose them 
which has not been a common one, either then or 



142 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

since. They were wholly consecrated to God. It is 
not often we meet with men capable of an entire self- 
surrender ; these . men were. They were so entirely 
devoted to God that, when Jesus called on them 
to give up their worldly callings and forsake all 
they had, to follow him, they obeyed without a ques- 
tion or a hesitating moment. How many men should 
we find in the Church now that would do the 
same ? Christ proposed this test to one young ruler, — 
amiable, reverent, moral, and religious, — and he "went 
away sad." He could do a great deal for God, but 
he could not give up all. Christ's disciples gave all 
to him, and therefore he gave all to them. Therefore 
he gave them to share his throne and his glory. The 
Apocalyptic vision showed graven on the foundations of 
the golden city the names of the twelve Apostles of the 
Lamb, those true-hearted men who were not only to 
be the founders of his Church on earth, but were, 
while he was yet in the flesh, his daily companions, 
his friends, "his own." 







C|rafs IittotrrMg i^tfjok 

swgJE are struck, in the history of our Lord, with 
HI the unworldliness of his manner of living his 
raftf!! daily life and fulfilling his great commission. 
It is emphatically true, in the history of Jesus, that his 
ways are not as our ways, and his thoughts as our 
thoughts. He did not choose the disciples of his first 
ministry as worldly wisdom would have chosen them. 
Though men of good and honest hearts, they were 
neither the most cultured nor the most influential of 
his nation. We should have said that men of the 
standing of Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus were 
preferable, other things being equal, to Peter the fisher- 
man or Matthew the tax-gatherer; but Jesus thought 
otherwise. 

And, furthermore, he sometimes selected those appar- 
ently most unlikely to further his ends. Thus, when 
he had a mission of mercy in view for Samaria, he 
called to the work a woman; not such as we should 
suppose a divine teacher would choose, — not a pre- 
eminently intellectual or a very good woman, — but, on 
the contrary, one of a careless life, and loose morals, 
and little culture. The history of this person, of the 

i43 



144 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



way in which he sought her acquaintance, arrested her 
attention, gained access to her heart, and made of her 
a missionary to draw the attention of her people to 
him, is wonderfully given by St. John. We have the 
image of a woman — such as many are, social, good- 
humored, talkative, and utterly without any high moral 
sense — approaching the well, where she sees this weary 
Jew reclining to rest himself. He introduces himself 
to her acquaintance by asking a favor, — the readiest 
way to open the heart of a woman of that class. She 
is evidently surprised that he will speak to her, being a 
Jew, and she a daughter of a despised and hated race. 
" How is it," she says, " that thou, a Jew, askest drink 
of me, a woman of Samaria ?" Jesus now answers her 
in that symbolic and poetic strain which was familiar 
with him : " If thou knewest the gift of God, and who 
this is that asketh drink of thee, thou wouldst ask of 
him, and he would give thee living water." The woman 
sees in this only the occasion for a lively rejoinder. 
" Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is 
deep; from whence then hast thou that living water ?" 
With that same mysterious air, as if speaking uncon- 
sciously from out some higher sphere, he answers, 
"Whosoever drinketh of this v/ater shall thirst again; 
but whosever shall drink of the water that I shall give 
shall never thirst. The water that I shall give shall 
be a well in him springing up to everlasting life." 

Impressed strangely by the words of the stranger, 
she answers confusedly, " Sir, give me this water, 
that I thirst not, neither come hither to dfaw." 
There is a feeble attempt at a jest struggling with the 



CHRIST'S UNWORLDLY METHODS. 145 

awe which is growing upon her. Jesus now touches 
the vital spot in her life. " Go, call thy husband and 
come hither." She said, " I have no husband." He 
answers, " Well hast thou said I have no husband ; thou 
hast had five husbands, and he thou now hast is not 
thy husband ; in that saidst thou truly." 

The stern, grave chastity of the Jew, his reverence 
for marriage, strike coldly on the light-minded woman 
accustomed to the easy tolerance of a low state of 
society. She is abashed, and hastily seeks to change 
the subject: " Sir, I see thou art a prophet;" and then 
she introduces the controverted point of the two liturgies 
and temples of Samaria and Jerusalem, — not the first 
nor the last was she of those who seek relief from 
conscience by discussing doctrinal dogmas. Then, to 
our astonishment, Jesus proceeds to declare to this 
woman of light mind and loose morality the sublime 
doctrines of spiritual worship, to predict the new era 
which is dawning on the world : " Woman, believe me, 
the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor yet 
in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. The hour 
cometh and now is when the true worshiper shall wor- 
ship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father 
seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit, and 
they that worship him must worship him in spirit and 
in truth." Then, in a sort of confused awe at his 
earnestness, the woman said, " I know that Messiah 
shall come, and when he is come he will tell us all 
things." Jesus saith unto her, "I that speak unto 
thee am he." 

At this moment the disciples returned. With their 



146 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

national prejudices, it was very astonishing, as they 
drew nigh, to see that their master was in close and 
earnest conversation with a Samaritan woman. Never- 
theless, when the higher and godlike in Jesus was 
fully enkindled, the light and fire were such as to 
awe them. They saw that he was in an exalted 
mood, which they dared not question. All the infinite 
love of the Saviour, the shepherd of souls, was awak- 
ing within him; the soul whom he has inspired with 
a new and holy calling is leaving him on a mission 
that is to brings crowds to his love. The disciples 
pray him to eat, but he is no longer hungry, no longer 
thirsty, no longer weary; he exults in the gifts that 
he is ready to give, and the hearts that are opening 
to receive. 

The disciples pray him, " Master, eat." He said, 
"I have meat to eat that ye know not of." They 
question in an undertone, " Hath any one brought 
him aught to eat?" He answers, "My meat and my 
drink is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to 
finish his work." Then, pointing towards the city, he 
speaks impassioned words of a harvest which is at 
hand; and they wonder. 

But meanwhile the woman, with the eagerness and 
bright, social readiness which characterize her, is call- 
ing to her townsmen, " Come, see a man that told me 
all that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?" 

What followed on this ? A crowd press out to see 
the wonder. Jesus is invited as an honored guest; 
he spends two days in the city, and gathers a band 
of disciples. 



CHRIST'S UNWORLDLY METHODS. 147 

After the resurrection of Jesus, we find further 
fruits of the harvest sown by a chance interview of 
Jesus with this woman. In the eighth of Acts we 
read of the ingathering of a church in a city of Sa- 
maria, where it is said that " the people, with one 
accord, gave heed to the things spoken by Philip, and 
there was great joy in that city." 

One thing in this story impresses us strongly, — the 
power which Jesus had to touch the divinest capabil- 
ities in the unlikeliest subjects. He struck at once 
and directly for what was highest and noblest in souls 
where it lay most hidden. As physician of souls he 
appealed directly to the vital moral force, and it acted 
under his touch. He saw the higher nature in this 
woman, and as one might draw a magnet over a 
heap of rubbish and bring out pure metal, so he from 
this careless, light-minded, good-natured, unprincipled 
creature brought out the suppressed and hidden yearn- 
ing for a better and higher life. She had no prejudices 
to keep, no station to preserve ; she was even to her 
own low moral sense consciously a sinner, and she 
was ready at the kind and powerful appeal to leave 
all and follow him. 

We have no further history of her. She is living 
now somewhere; but wherever she may be, we may 
be quite sure she never, has forgotten the conversation 
at the well in Samaria, and the man who "told her 
all that ever she did." 



XIV. 



Cljrot sit) % jaUnt lOjntan. 




HE absolute divinity of Jesus, the height at 
which he stood above all men, is nowhere 
so shown as in what he dared and did for 
woman, and the godlike consciousness of authority 
with which he did it. It was at a critical period in 
his ministry, when all eyes were fixed on him in keen 
inquiry, when many of the respectable classes were 
yet trembling in the balance whether to accept his 
claims or not, that Jesus in the calmest and most 
majestic manner took the ground that the sins of a 
fallen woman were like any other sins, and that re- 
pentant love entitled to equal forgiveness.. The story 
so wonderful can be told only in the words of the 
sacred narrative. 

" And one of the Pharisees desired him that he 
would eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's 
house and sat down to meat. And behold a woman 
in that city which was a sinner, when she knew that 
Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an 
alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind 

148 



CHRIST AND THE FALLEN WOMAN. 149 

him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, 
and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and 
kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. 
Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw 
it, he spake within himself, saying, This man, if he 
were a prophet, would have known who and what 
manner of woman this is, for she is a sinner. And 
Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have some- 
what to say unto thee. He said unto him, Master, say 
on. There was a certain creditor had two debtors ; 
the one owed him five hundred pence and the other 
fifty, and when they had nothing to pay he frankly 
forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which will love 
him most. Simon answered and said, I suppose he to 
whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou 
hast rightly judged. And he turned to the woman 
and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I 
entered into thy house and thou gavest me no water 
for my feet, but she hath washed my feet with tears 
and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou 
gavest me no kiss, but this woman, since the time I 
came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head 
with oil thou didst not anoint, but she hath anointed 
my feet with ointment. Wherefore, I say unto you, 
her sins, which are many, are forgiven her, for she 
loved much; but to whom little is forgiven the same 
loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are for- 
given. And they that sat at meat began to say within 
themselves, Who is this that forgiveth sins also ? And 
he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee; go 
in peace." 



150 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Nothing can be added to the pathos and solemn 
dignity of this story, in which our Lord assumed with 
tranquil majesty the rights to supreme love possessed 
by the Creator, and his sovereign power to forgive 
sins and dispense favors. The repentant Magdalene 
became henceforth one of the characteristic figures in 
the history of the Christian Church. Mary Magdalene 
became eventually a prominent character in the mythic 
legends of the mediaeval mythology. A long history 
of missionary labors and enthusiastic preaching of the 
gospel in distant regions of the earth is ascribed to 
her. Churches arose that bore her name, hymns were 
addressed to her. Even the reforming Savonarola 
addresses one of his spiritual canticles to St. Mary 
Magdalene. The various pictures of her which occur 
in every part of Europe are a proof of the interest 
which these legends inspired. The most of them are 
wild and poetic, and exhibit a striking contrast to the 
concise brevity and simplicity of the New Testament 
story. 

The mythic legends make up a romance in which 
Mary the sister of Martha and Mary Magdalene the 
sinner are oddly considered as the same person. It 
is sufficient to read the chapter in St. John which 
gives an account of the raising of Lazarus, to perceive ( 
that such a confusion is absurd. Mary and Martha 
there appear as belonging to a family in good standing 
to which many flocked with expressions of condolence 
and respect in time of affliction. And afterwards, 
in that grateful feast made for the restoration of their 
brother, we read that so many flocked to the house 



CHRIST AND THE FALLEN WOMAN. 15 1 

that the jealousy of the chief priests was excited. All 
these incidents, representing a family of respectability, 
are entirely inconsistent with any such supposition. 
But while we repudiate this extravagance of the 
tradition, there does seem ground for identifying the 
Mary Magdalene who was one of the most devoted 
followers of our Lord with the forgiven sinner of this 
narrative. We read of a company of women who 
followed Jesus and ministered to him. In the eighth 
chapter of Luke he is said to be accompanied by 
" certain women which had been healed of evil spirits 
and infirmities," among whom is mentioned " Mary 
called Magdalene," as having been a victim of demo- 
niacal possession. Some women of rank and fortune 
also are mentioned as members of the same company: 
" Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod's steward, and 
Susanna, and many others who ministered to him of 
their substance." A modern commentator thinks it 
improbable that Mary Magdalene could be identified 
with the " sinner " spoken of by St. Luke, because 
women of standing like Joanna and Susanna would 
not have received one of her class to their company. 
We ask why not? If Jesus had received her, had 
forgiven and saved her ; if he acknowledged previously 
her grateful ministrations, — is it likely that they would 
reject her? It was the very peculiarity and glory of 
the new kingdom that it had a better future for 
sinners, and for sinful woman as well as sinful man. 
Jesus did not hesitate to say to the proud and 
prejudiced religious aristocracy of his day, "The 
publicans and harlots go into the kingdom cf heaven 



I5 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

before you." We cannot doubt that the loving Chris- 
tian women who ministered to Jesus received this 
penitent sister as a soul absolved and purified by the 
sovereign word of their Lord, and henceforth there 
was for her a full scope for that ardent, self-devoting 
power of her nature which had been her ruin, and 
was now to become her salvation. 

Some commentators seem to think that the dreadful 
demoniacal possession which was spoken of in Mary 
Magdalene proves her not to have been identical with 
the woman of St. Luke. But on the contrary, it would 
seem exactly to account for actions of a strange and 
unaccountable wickedness, for a notoriety in crime 
that went far to lead the Pharisees to feel that her 
very touch was pollution. The story is symbolic of 
what is too often seen in the fall of woman. A noble 
and beautiful nature wrecked through inconsiderate 
prodigality of love, deceived, betrayed, ruined, often 
drifts like a shipwrecked bark into the power of evil 
spirits. Rage, despair, revenge, cruelty, take possession 
of the crushed ruin that should have been the home 
of the sweetest affections. We are not told when or 
where the healing word was spoken that drove the 
cruel fiends from Mary's soul. Perhaps before she 
entered the halls of the Pharisee, while listening to 
the preaching of Jesus, the madness and despair had 
left her. We can believe that in his higher moods 
virtue went from him, and there was around him a 
holy and cleansing atmosphere from which all evil fled 
away, — a serene and healing purity which calmed the 
throbbing fever of passion and gave the soul once 
more the image of its better self. 



CHRIST AND THE FALLEN WOMAN. 153 

We see in the manner in which Mary found her 
way to the feet of Jesus the directness and vehemence, 
the uncalculating self-sacrifice and self-abandon, of one 
of those natures which, when they move, move with a 
rush of undivided impulse; which, when they love, 
trust all, believe all, and are ready to sacrifice all. As 
once she had lost herself in this self-abandonment, so 
now at the feet of her God she gains all by the same 
power of self-surrender. 

We do not meet Mary Magdalene again till we find 
her at the foot of the cross, sharing the last anguish 
of our Lord and his mother. We find her watching 
the sepulcher, preparing sweet spices for embalming. 
In the dim gray of the resurrection morning she is 
there again, only to find the sepulcher open and the 
beloved form gone. Everything in this last scene is in 
consistency with the idea of the passionate self-devotion 
of a nature whose sole life is in its love. The 
disciples, when they found not the body, went away ; 
but Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping, and 
as she wept she stooped down and looked into the 
sepulcher. The angels said to her, "Woman, why 
weepest thou? She answered, Because they have taken 
away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid 
him." She then turns and sees through her tears 
dimly the form of a man standing there. "Jesus saith 
unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest 
thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith 
unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me 
where thou hast laid him, and I will go and take him 
away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary ! She turned herself 
and said unto him, Rabboni, — Master!" 



154 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

In all thig we see the characteristic devotion and 
energy of her who loved much because she was forgiven 
much. It was the peculiarity of Jesus that he saw 
the precious capability of every nature, even in the 
very dust of defilement. The power of devoted love 
is the crown-jewel of the soul, and Jesus had the eye 
to see where it lay trampled in the mire, and the 
strong hand to bring it forth purified and brightened. 
It is the deepest malignity of Satan to degrade and 
ruin souls through love. It is the glory of Christ, 
through love, to redeem and restore. 

In the history of Christ as a teacher, it is remark- 
able that, while he was an object of enthusiastic 
devotion to so many women, while a band of them 
followed his preaching and ministered to his wants 
and those of his disciples, yet there was about him 
something so entirely unworldly, so sacredly high and 
pure, that even the very suggestion of scandal in this 
regard is not to be found in the bitterest vituperations 
of his enemies of the first two centuries. 

If we compare Jesus with Socrates, the moral teacher 
most frequently spoken of as approaching him, we 
shall see a wonderful contrast. Socrates associated 
with courtesans, without passion and without reproof, 
in a spirit of half-sarcastic, philosophic tolerance. No 
quickening of the soul of woman, no call to a higher 
life, came from him. Jesus is stern and grave in his 
teachings of personal purity, severe in his requirements. 
He was as intolerant to sin as he was merciful to 
penitence. He did not extenuate the sins he forgave. 
He declared the sins of Mary to be many, in the same 



CHRIST AND THE FALLEN WOMAN. *55 

breath that he pronounced her pardon. He said to 
the adulterous woman whom he protected, "Go, sin 
no more." The penitents who joined the company of 
his disciples were so raised above their former selves, 
that, instead of being the shame, they were the glory 
of the new kingdom. St. Paul says to the first 
Christians, speaking of the adulterous and impure, 
" Such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye 
are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the 
Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of God." 

The tradition of the Church that Mary Magdalene 
was an enthusiastic preacher of Jesus seems in keeping 
with all we know of the strength and fervor of her 
character. Such love must find expression, and we 
are told that when the first persecution scattered the 
little church at Jerusalem, " they that were scattered 
went everywhere, preaching the word." Some of the 
most effective preaching of Christ is that of those who 
testify in their own person of a great salvation. " He 
can save to the uttermost, for he has saved me," is a 
testimony that often goes more straight to the heart 
than all the arguments of learning. Christianity had 
this peculiarity over all other systems, that it not only 
forgave the past, but made of its bitter experiences a 
healing medicine ; so that those who had sinned 
deepest might have therefrom a greater redeeming 
power. "When thou art converted, strengthen thy 
brethren," was the watchword of the penitent. 

The wonderful mind of Goethe has seized upon and 
embodied this peculiarity of Christianity in his great 
poem of Faust. The first part shows the Devil mak- 



J 56 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ing of the sweetest and noblest affection of the con- 
fiding Margaret a cruel poison to corrupt both body 
and soul. We see her driven to crime, remorse, shame, 
despair, all human forms and forces of society united 
to condemn her, when with a last cry she stretches 
her poor hands to heaven and says, "Judgment of 
God, I commend myself to you"; and then falls a 
voice from heaven, " She is judged ; she is saved.'" 

In the second part we see the world-worn, weary 
Faust passing through the classic mythology, vainly 
seeking rest and finding none ; he seeks rest in a life 
of benevolence to man, but fiends of darkness conflict 
with his best aspirations, and dog his steps through 
life, and in his dying hour gather round to seize his 
soul and carry it to perdition. But around him is a 
shining band. Mary the mother of Jesus with a 
company of purified penitents encircle him, and his 
soul passes, in infantine weakness, to the guardian 
arms of Margaret, — once a lost and ruined woman, 
now a strong and pitiful angel, — who, like a tender 
mother, leads the new-born soul to look upon the 
glories of heaven, while angel-voices sing to the victory 
of good over evil : — 

" All that is transient 
Is but a parable ; 
The unattainable 
Here is made real. 
The indescribable 
Here is accomplished ; 
The eternal womanly- 
Draws us upward and onward." 



XV. 



%\t °$Utoler at <M's Sppifnr. 




HE interest inspired by the wonderful charac- 
ter of Jesus rests especially on those incidents 
which are most purely human, his private, per- 
sonal friendships, his keen sympathy with the suffering 
and the afflicted. Among these incidents the story and 
characters of the two sisters, Martha and Mary, have 
been set before us with a fine individualism of dra- 
matic representation that seems to make them real to 
us, even at this distance of time. 

The two sisters of Bethany have had for ages 
a name and a living power in the Church. Thou- 
sands of hearts have throbbed with theirs ; thousands 
have wept sympathetic tears in their sorrows and 
rejoiced in their joy. By a few simple touches in 
the narrative they are so delicately and justly dis- 
criminated that they stand for the representatives of 
two distinct classes. Some of the ancient Christian 
writers considered them as types of the active and the 
contemplative aspects of religion. Martha is viewed 
as the secular Christian, serving God in and through 

i57 



158 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

the channels of worldly business, and Mary as the more 
peculiarly religious person, devoted to a life of holy 
meditation and the researches of heavenly truth. The 
two were equally the friends of Jesus. Apparently, 
the two sisters with one brother were an orphan 
family, united by the strongest mutual affection, and 
affording a circle peculiarly congenial to the Master. 

They inhabited a rural home just outside of Jeru- 
salem ; and it seems that here, after the labors of a 
day spent in teaching in the city, our Lord found at 
evening a home-like retreat where he could enjoy 
perfect quiet and perfect love. It would seem, from 
many touches in the Gospel narrative, as if Jesus, 
amid the labors and applauses and successes of a 
public life, yearned for privacy and domesticity,— for 
that home love which he persistently renounced to 
give himself wholly to mankind. There is a shade of 
pathos in his answer to one who proposed to be his 
disciple and dwell with him : " Foxes have holes ; the 
birds of the air have nests ; but the Son of man hath 
not where to lay his head." This little orphan circle, 
with their quiet home, were thus especially dear to 
him, and it appears that this was his refuge during 
that last week of his life, when he knew that every 
day was bringing him nearer to the final anguish. 

It is wonderful how sharply and truly, in a narra- 
tive so brief, the characters of Martha and Mary are 
* individualized. Martha, in her Judaean dress and 
surroundings, is, after all, exactly such a good woman 
as is often seen in our modern life, — a woman pri- 
marily endowed with the faculties necessary for getting 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 159 

on in the world, yet sincerely religious. She is 
energetic, business-like, matter-of-fact, strictly ortho- 
dox, and always ready for every emergency. She 
lives in the present life strongly and intensely, and 
her religion exhibits itself through regular forms and 
agencies. She believes in the future life orthodoxly, 
and is always prompt to confess its superior impor- 
tance as a matter of doctrine, though prone to make 
material things the first in practice. Many such women 
there are in the high places of the Christian Church, 
and much good they do. They manage fairs, they 
dress churches, they get up religious festivals, their 
names are on committees, they are known at . celebra- 
tions. They rule their own homes with activity and 
diligence, and they are justly honored by all who 
know them. Now, nothing is more remarkable in the 
history of Jesus than the catholicity of his apprecia- 
tion of character. He never found fault with natural 
organization, or expected all people to be of one 
pattern. He did not break with Thomas for being 
naturally a cautious doubter, or Peter for being a 
precipitate believer ; and it is specially recorded in 
the history of this family that Jesus loved Martha. 
He understood her, he appreciated her worth, and he 
loved her. 

In Mary we see the type of those deeper and more 
sensitive natures who ever aspire above and beyond 
the material and temporal to the eternal and divine; 
souls that are seeking and inquiring with a restlessness 
that no earthly thing can satisfy, who can find no 
peace until they find it in union with God. 



160 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

In St. Luke we have a record of the manner in 
which the first acquaintance with this family was 
formed. This historian says : " A woman named Mar- 
tha received him at her house." Evidently the decisive 
and salient power of her nature caused her to be re- 
garded as mistress of the family. There was a grown- 
up brother in the family; but this house is not called 
the house of Lazarus, but the house of Martha ■ — a 
form of speaking the more remarkable from the great 
superiority or leadership which ancient customs award- 
ed to the male sex. But Martha was one of those 
natural leaders whom everybody instinctively thinks of 
as the head of any house they may happen to belong 
to. Her tone toward Mary is authoritative. The 
Mary-nature is a nature apt to appear to disadvantage 
in physical things. It is often puzzled, and unskilled, 
and unready in the details and emergencies of a life 
like ours, which so little meets its deepest feelings and 
most importunate wants. It acquires skill in earthly 
things only as a matter of discipline and conscience, 
but is always yearning above them to something higher 
and divine. A delicacy of moral nature suggests to 
such a person a thousand scruples of conscientious 
inquiry in every turn of life, which embarrass direct- 
ness of action. To the Martha-nature, practical, direct, 
and prosaic, all these doubts, scruples, hesitations, and 
unreadinesses appear only as pitiable weaknesses. 

Again, Martha's nature attaches a vast importance 
to many things which, in the view of Mary, are so 
fleeting and perishable, and have so little to do with 
the deeper immortal wants of .the soul, that it is difficult 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 161 

for her even to remember and keep them in sight. 
The requirements of etiquette, the changes and details 
of fashion, the thousand particulars which pertain to 
keeping up a certain footing in society and a certain 
position in the world — all these Martha has at her 
fingers' ends. They are the breath of her nostrils, 
while Mary is always forgetting, overlooking, and trans- 
gressing them. Many a Mary has escaped into a con- 
vent, or joined a sisterhood, or worn the plain dress 
of the Quaker, in order that she might escape from 
the exaction of the Marthas of her day, "careful [or, 
more literally, full of care] and troubled about many 
things." 

It appears that in her way Martha was a religious 
woman, a sincere member of the Jewish Church, and 
an intense believer. The preaching of Christ was the 
great religious phenomenon of the times, and Martha, 
Mary, and Lazarus joined the crowd who witnessed 
his miracles and listened to his words Both women 
accepted his message and believed his Messiahship — 
Martha, from the witness of his splendid miracles ; 
Mary, from the deep accord of her heart with the 
wonderful words he had uttered. To Martha he was 
the King that should reign in splendor at Jerusalem, 
and raise their nation to an untold height of glory; 
to Mary he was the answer to the eternal question — 
the Way, the Truth, the Life, for which she had been 
always longing. 

Among many who urge and press hospitality, Mar- 
tha's invitation prevails. A proud home is that, when 
Jesus follows her — her prize, her captive. The woman 



1 62 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

in our day who has captured in her net of hospitalities 
the orator, the poet, the warrior — the star of all eyes, 
the central point of all curiosity, desire, and regard — 
can best appreciate Martha's joy. She will make an 
entertainment that will do credit to the occasion. She ' 
revolves prodigies of hospitality. She invites guests 
to whom her Acquisition shall be duly exhibited, 
and all is hurry, bustle, and commotion. But Mary 
follows him, silent, with a fluttering heart. His 
teaching has aroused the divine longing, the immor- 
tal pain, to a throbbing intensity ; a sweet presenti- 
ment fills her soul, that she is near One through whom 
the way into the Holiest is open, and now is the hour. 
She neither hears nor sees the bustle of preparation ; 
but apart, where the Master has seated himself, she 
sits down at his feet, and her eyes, more than her 
voice, address to him that question and that prayer 
which are the question and the one great reality of all 
this fleeting, mortal life. 

The question is answered ; the prayer is granted. At 
his feet she becomes spiritually clairvoyant. The way 
to God becomes clear and open. Her soul springs 
toward the light; is embraced by the peace of God 
that passeth understanding. It is a soul-crisis, and the 
Master sees that in that hour his breath has unfolded 
into blossom buds that had been struggling in darkness. 
Mary has received in her bosom the " white stone with 
the new name, which no man knoweth save him that 
receiveth it," and of which Jesus only is the giver. As 
Master and disciple sit in that calm and sweet accord, 
in which giver and receiver are alike blessed, suddenly 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 163 

Martha appears and breaks into the interview, in a 
characteristically imperative sentence : " Lord, dost thou 
not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? 
Bid her, therefore, that she help me." 

Nothing could more energetically indicate Martha's 
character than this sentence. It shows her blunt sin- 
cerity, her conscientious, matter-of-fact worldliness, and 
her dictatorial positiveness. Evidently, here is a person 
accustomed to having her own way and bearing down 
all about her ; a person who believes in herself without 
a doubt, and is so positive that her way is the only 
right one that she cannot but be amazed that the Master 
has not at once seen as she does. To be sure, this is 
in her view the Christ, the Son of God, the King of 
Israel, the human being whom in her deepest heart she 
reverences ; but no matter, she is so positive that she 
is right that she does not hesitate to say her say, and 
make her complaint of him as well as of her sister. 
People like Martha often arraign and question the very 
providence of God itself when it stands in the way of 
their own plans. Martha is sure of her ground. Here 
is the Messiah, the King of Israel, at her house, and 
she is getting up an entertainment worthy of him, 
slaving herself to death for him, and he takes no notice, 
and most inconsiderately allows her dreamy sister to 
sit listening to him, instead of joining in the prep- 
aration. 

The reply of Jesus went, as his replies were wont to 
do, to the very root-fault of Martha's life, the fault of 
all such natures : " Martha, Martha ! thou art careful 
and troubled about many things, but one thing is need- 



V 



164 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ful, and Mary hath chosen that good part which shall 
not be taken from her.'' The Master's words evidently 
recognize that in that critical hour Mary had passed a 
boundary in her soul history, and made an attainment 
of priceless value. She had gained something that 
could never be taken from her ; and she had gained it 
by that single-hearted devotion to spiritual things which 
made her prompt to know and seize the hour of 
opportunity. 

The brief narrative there intermits ; we are not told 
how Martha replied, or what are the results of this 
plain, tender faithfulness of reproof. The Saviour, be 
it observed, did not blame Martha for her nature. He 
did- not blame her for not being Mary; but he did 
blame her for not restraining and governing her own 
nature and keeping it in due subjection to higher con- 
siderations. A being of brighter worlds, he stood 
looking on Martha's life, — on her activities and bustle 
and care ; and to him how sorrowfully worthless the 
greater part of them appeared ! To him they were 
mere toys and playthings, such as a child is allowed 
to play with in the earlier, undeveloped hours of exist- 
ence ; not to be harshly condemned, but still utterly 
fleeting and worthless in the face of the tremendous 
eternal realities, the glories and the dangers of the 
eternal state. 

It must be said here that all we know of our Lord 
leads us to feel that he was not encouraging and 
defending in Mary a selfish, sentimental indulgence in 
her own cherished emotions and affections, leaving the 
burden of necessary care on a sister who would have 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 165 

been equally glad to sit at Jesus's feet. That was not 
his reading of the situation. It was that Martha, en- 
grossed in a thousand cares, burdened herself with a 
weight of perplexities of which there was no need, and 
found no time and had no heart to come to him and 
speak of the only\ the one thing that endures beyond 
the present world. To how many hearts does this 
reproof apply ? How many who call themselves Chris- 
tians are weary, wasted, worn, drained of life, injured 
in health, fretted in temper, by a class of anxieties so 
purely worldly that they can never bring them to Christ, 
or if they do, would meet first and foremost his tender 
reproof, " Thou art careful and troubled about many 
things ; there is but one thing really needful. Seek that 
good part which shall never be taken away." 

What fruit this rebuke bore will appear as we fur- 
ther pursue the history of the sister. The subsequent 
story shows that Martha was a brave, sincere, good 
woman, capable of yielding to reproof and acknowl- 
edging a fault. There is precious material in such, if 
only their powers be turned to the highest and best 
things. 

It is an interesting thought that the human affection 
of Jesus for one family has been made the means of 
leaving on record the most consoling experience for 
the sorrows of bereavement that sacred literature af- 
fords. Viewed merely on the natural side, the intensity 
of human affections and the frightful possibilities of 
suffering involved in their very sweetness present a 
fearful prospect when compared with that stony inflex- 
ibility of natural law, which goes forth crushing, bruis- 



1 66 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ing, lacerating, without the least apparent feeling for 
human agony. 

The God of nature appears silent, unalterable, un- 
sympathetic, pursuing general good without a throb of 
pity for individual suffering; and that suffering is so 
unspeakable, so terrible ! Close shadowing every bridal 
every cradle, is this awful possibility of death that may 
come at any moment, unannounced and inevitable. 
The joy of this hour may become the bitterness of the 
next ; the ring, the curl of hair, the locket, the picture, 
that to-day are a treasure of hope and happiness, to- 
morrow may be only weapons of bitterness that stab 
at every view. The silent inflexibility of God in up- 
holding laws that work out such terrible agonies and 
suffering is something against which the human heart 
moans and chafes through all ancient literature. "The 
gods envy the happy," was the construction put upon 
the problem of life as the old sages viewed it. 

But in this second scene of the story of the sisters 
of Bethany we have that view of God which is the 
only one powerful enough to soothe and control the 
despair of the stricken heart. It says to us that be- 
hind this seeming inflexibility, this mighty and most 
needful upholding of law, is a throbbing, sympathizing 
heart, — bearing with us the sorrow of this struggling 
period of existence, and pointing to a perfect fulfill- 
ment in the future. 

The story opens most remarkably. In the absence 
of the Master, the brother is stricken down with deadly 
disease. Forthwith a hasty messenger is dispatched to 
Jesus. "Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick." Here 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 167 

is no prayer expressed; but human language could 
not be more full of all the elements of the best 
kind of prayer. It is the prayer of perfect trust — the 
prayer of love that has no shadow of doubt. If only 
we let Jesus know we are in trouble, we are helped. 
We need not ask, we need only say, " He whom thou 
lovest is sick," and he will understand, and the work 
will be done. We are safe with him. 

Then comes the seeming contradiction — the trial of 
faith — that gives this story such a value : " Now Jesus 
loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. When, there- 
fore, he heard that he was sick, he abode two days in 
the same place where he was." Because he loved 
them, he delayed; because he loved them, he resisted 
that most touching appeal that heart can make, — the 
appeal of utter trust. We can imagine the wonder, 
the anguish, the conflict of spirit, when death at last 
shut the door in the face of their prayers. Had God for- 
gotten to be gracious? Had he in anger shut up his 
tender mercy ? Did not Jesus love them ? Had he 
not power to heal ? Why then had he suffered this ? 
Ah ! this is exactly the strait in which thousands of 
Christ's own beloved ones must stand in the future; 
and Mary and Martha, unconsciously to themselves, 
were suffering with Christ in the great work of human 
consolation. Their distress and anguish and sorrow 
were necessary to work out a great experience of 
God's love, where multitudes of anguished hearts have 
laid themselves down as on a pillow of repose, and 
have been comforted. 

Something of this is shadowed in the Master's words : 



1 68 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

" This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of 
God, — that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." 
What was that glory of God ? Not most his natural 
power, but his sympathetic tenderness, his loving heart. 
What is the glory of the Son of God ? Not the mere 
display of power, but power used to console, in mani- 
festing to the world that this cruel death — the shadow 
that haunts all human life, that appalls and terrifies, 
that scatters anguish and despair — is not death, but the 
gateway of a brighter life, in which Jesus shall restore 
love to love, in eternal reunion. 

In the scene with the sisters before the Saviour 
arrives, we are struck with the consideration in which 
the family is held. This house is thronged with 
sympathizing friends, and, as appears from some 
incidents afterwards, friends among the higher classes 
of the nation. Martha hears of the approach of Jesus, 
and goes forth to meet him. 

In all the scene which follows we are impressed with 
the dignity and worth of Martha's character. We see 
in the scene of sorrow that Martha has been the 
strong, practical woman, on whom all rely in the hour 
of sickness, and whose energy is equal to any emer- 
gency. We see her unsubdued by emotion, ready to 
go forth to receive Jesus, and prompt to meet the 
issues of the moment. We see, too, that the appre- 
ciation of the worth of her character, which had led 
him to admonish her against the materialistic tendencies 
of such a nature, was justified by the fruits of that 
rebuke. Martha had grown more spiritual by inter- 
course with the Master, and as she falls at Jesus's 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 169 

feet, the half-complaint which her sorrow wrings from 
her is here merged in the expression of her faith : 
" Lord, if thou hadst been here my brother had not 
died ; but I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt 
ask of God, God will give it to thee. Jesus saith 
unto her, Thy brother shall rise again." Like every 
well-trained religious Jew of her day, Martha was 
versed in the doctrine of the general resurrection. 
That this belief was a more actively operating motive 
with the ancient Jewish than with the modern Christian 
Church of our day is attested by the affecting history 
of the martyrdom of the mother and her seven sons, 
in the Book of Maccabees. Martha therefore makes 
prompt answer, " I know that he shall rise again in 
the resurrection at the last day." Jesus answered her 
in words which no mere mortal could have uttered — 
words of a divine fullness of meaning — "I am the 
Resurrection and the Life: he that believeth in me, 
though dead, shall live, and whosoever believeth in 
me is immortal." 

In these words he claims to be the great source of 
Life, — the absolute Lord and Controller of all that 
relates to life, death, and eternity; and he makes the 
appeal to Martha's faith : " Believest thou this ?" 
"Yea, Lord," she responds, "I believe thou art the 
Christ of God that should come into the world." And 
then she runs and calls her sister secretly, saying, 
"The Master is come and calleth for thee." As a 
majestic symphony modulates into a tender and 
pathetic minor passage, so the tone of the narrative 
here changes to the most exquisite pathos. Mary, 



170 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

attended by her weeping friends, comes and falls at 
Jesus's feet, and sobs out : " Lord, if thou hadst been 
here my brother had not died!" 

It indicates the delicate sense of character which 
ever marked the intercourse of our Lord, that to this 
helpless, heart-broken child prostrate at his feet he 
addresses no appeal to reason or faith. He felt within 
himself the overwhelming power of that tide of emotion 
which for the time bore down both reason and faith 
in helpless anguish. With such sorrow there was no 
arguing, and Jesus did not attempt argument; for the 
story goes on : " When Jesus saw her weeping, and 
the Jews also weeping that came with her, he groaned 
in spirit and was troubled; and he said, Where have 
ye laid him ? And they said, Lord, come and see. 
Jesus wept." Those tears interpreted for all time 
God's silence and apparent indifference to human 
suffering; and wherever Christ is worshiped as the 
brightness of the Father's glory and the express image 
of his person, they bear witness that the God who 
upholds the laws that wound and divide human 
affections still feels with us the sorrow which he 
permits. "In all our afflictions he is afflicted." 

And now came the sublime and solemn scene when 
he who had claimed to be the Resurrection and the Life 
made good his claim. Standing by the grave he called, 
as he shall one day call to all the dead: " Lazarus, 
come forth!" And here the curtain drops over the 
scene of restoration. 

We do not see this family circle again till just 
before the final scene of the great tragedy of Christ's 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 171 

life. The hour was at hand, of suffering, betrayal, 
rejection, denial, shame, agony, and death; and with 
the shadow of this awful cloud over his mind, Jesus 
comes for the last time to Jerusalem. To the eye of 
the thoughtless, Jesus was never so popular, so beloved, 
as at the moment when he entered the last week of 
his life at Jerusalem. Palm branches and flowers 
strewed his way, hosannas greeted him on every side, 
and the chief-priests and scribes said, " Perceive ye 
how ye prevail nothing? Behold the world is gone 
after him !" But the mind of Jesus was wrapped in 
that awful shade of the events that were so soon to 
follow. 

He passes out, after his first day in Jerusalem, to 
Bethany, and takes refuge in this dear circle. There 
they make him a feast, and Martha serves, but Lazarus, 
as a restored treasure, sits at the table. Then took 
Mary a pound of ointment, very precious, and anointed 
the head of Jesus, and anointed his feet with the 
ointment, and wiped them with her hair. 

There is something in the action that marks the 
poetic and sensitive nature of Mary. Her heart was 
overburdened with gratitude and love. She longed to 
give something, and how little was there that she could 
give! She buys the most rare, the most costly of 
perfumes, breaks the vase, and sheds it upon his head. 
Could she have put her whole life, her whole existence, 
into that fleeting perfume and poured it out for him, 
she gladly would have done it. That was what the 
action said, and what Jesus understood. Forthwith 
comes the criticism of Judas : " What a waste ! It 



I7 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

were better to give the money to the poor than to 
expend it in mere sentimentalism." Jesus defended 
her with all the warmth of his nature, in words tinged 
with the presentiment of his approaching doom: "Let 
her alone; she is come aforehand to anoint my body 
for the burial." Then, as if deeply touched with the 
reality of that love which thus devoted itself to him, 
he adds, "Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached 
throughout the world, there shall what this woman 
hath done be had in remembrance." The value set 
upon pure love, upon that unconsidering devotion which 
gives its best and utmost freely and wholly, is expressed 
in these words. A loving God seeks love; and he 
who thus spoke is he who afterward, when he appeared 
in glory, declared his abhorrence of lukewarmness in 
his followers: "I would thou wert cold or hot; because 
thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out of my mouth." 
It is significant of the change which had passed upoa. 
Martha that no criticism of Mary's action in this case 
came from her. There might have been a time when 
this inconsiderate devotion of a poetic nature would 
have annoyed her and called out remonstrance. In 
her silence we feel a sympathetic acquiescence. 

After this scene we meet the family no more. 
Doubtless the three were among the early watchers 
upon the resurrection morning; — doubtless they were 
of the number among whom Jesus stood after the 
resurrection, saying, "Peace be unto you;" — doubtless 
they were of those who went out with him to the 
Mount of Olives when he was taken up into heaven ; 
and doubtless they are now with him in glory : for it 



THE REVEALER OF GOD'S SYMPATHY. 173 

is an affecting thought that no human personality is 
ever lost or to be lost. In the future ages it may be 
our happiness to see and know those whose history 
has touched our hearts so deeply. 

One lesson from this history we pray may be taken 
into every mourning heart. The Apostle says that • 
Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power. 
The laws by which accident, sickness, loss, and death 
are constantly bringing despair and sorrow to sensitive 
hearts are upheld by that same Jesus who wept at 
the grave of Lazarus, and who is declared to be Jesus 
Christ, the same yesterday and forever. When we see 
the exceeding preciousness of human love in his eyes, 
and realize his sympathetic nature, and then remember 
that he is Resurrection and Life, can we not trust 
him with our best beloved, and look to him for that 
hour of reunion which he has promised ? 

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body is a 
precious concession to human weakness and human 
love. How dear the outward form of our child, — how 
distressing to think we shall never see it again ! But 
Christ promises we shall. Here is a mystery. St. Paul 
says, that as the seed buried in the earth is to the 
new plant or flower so is our present mortal body to 
the new immortal one that shall spring from it. It 
shall be our friend, our child, familiar to us with all 
that mysterious charm of personal identity, yet clothed 
with the life and beauty of the skies; and then the 
Lord God will wipe away all tears from all faces. 



Sltfmt (Satjj'riitjj Cloufe ^nmitfr f Iteto. 




HEN gath'ring clouds around I view, 
And days are dark, and friends are few, 
On Him I lean who not in vain 
experienced every human pain ; 
He sees my wants, allays my fears, 
And counts and treasures up my tears. 

If aught should tempt my soul to stray 
From heavenly wisdom's narrow way, 
To fly the good I would pursue, 
Or do the sin I would not do, 
Still he who felt temptation's power 
Shall guard me in that dangerous hour. 

If wounded love my bosom swell, 
Deceived by those I prized so well, 
He shall his pitying aid bestow 
Who felt on earth severer woe, 
At once betrayed, denied, or fled, 
By those who shared his daily bread. 



If vexing thoughts within me rise, 
And sore dismayed my spirit dies, 
Still he who once vouchsafed to bear 
The sickening anguish of despair 
174 



WHEN GATHERING CLOUDS. 175 

Shall sweetly sooth, shall gently dry. 
The throbbing heart, the streaming eye. 

When sorrowing 1 o'er some stone I bend 
Which covers what was once a friend, 
And from his voice, his hand, his smile, 
Divides me for a little while, 
Thou, Saviour, mark'st the tears I shed, 
For thou didst weep o'er Lazarus dead. 

And O, when I have safely past 
Through every conflict but the last, 
Still, still unchanging, watch beside 
My painful bed, — for thou hast died ; 
Then point to realms of cloudless day, 
And wipe the latest tear away. 

— Sir Robert Grant. 






XVI. 

€l}e Jttradifceiteas of fans. 

HERE was one great characteristic in the life of 
Jesus which his followers succeed in imitat- 
ing less than any other, and that is a singular 
sweetness and attractiveness which drew toward him 
even the sinful and fallen. There are the most ob- 
vious indications in all the narrative that Christ's 
virtue was not of the repellent kind that drove sinners 
away from him, but that there was around him a 
peculiar charm and graciousness of manner which 
affected the most uncongenial characters. 

We are all familiar with a style of goodness quite 
the reverse of this — a goodness that is terrible to evil- 
doers — a goodness that is instinctively felt to have no 
sympathy with the sinner. Such was the virtue of 
Christ's great forerunner, John the Baptist. He com- 
manded, but did not charm; the attraction that drew 
men toward him was that of mingled fear and curiosity, 
but there was no tenderness in it. When the scribes 
and Pharisees nocked to his baptism, he met them 

176 



THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF JESUS. 1 77 

with a thunderbolt : " generation of vipers ! who 
hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" He 
declined all social joys ; he would not eat or drink 
at men's tables; he dwelt alone in the deserts, ap- 
pearing as a Voice — a voice of warning and terror! 
His disciples were few ; he took no pains to make them 
more. 

But even this stern and rugged nature felt the charm 
and sweetness of Jesus, as something different from 
himself. It is very touching to read how the peculiar 
demeanor of Jesus impressed this hardy old warrior : 
" And looking on Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold 
the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the 
world." The words seem as if they might have been 
said with tears in the eyes. Immediately two of his 
few disciples left him and followed Jesus ; and he was 
content. " He must increase and I must decrease," he 
said, humbly. "He that is from Heaven is above all." 

We find that Jesus- loved social life and the fellow- 
ship of men. Though he spent the first forty days 
after his mission began in the solitude of the desert, 
yet he returned from it the same warm-hearted and 
social being as before. The first appearance that he 
made was at a wedding-feast, and his very first miracle 
was wrought to enhance its joy. A wedding-feast in 
those lands meant more than with us. It was not 
merely an hour given- to festivity, but lasted from 
three to seven days. There were large gatherings of 
relations and friends from afar; there were dances and 
songs, and every form of rejoicing; and at this par- 
ticular feast in Cana it seems Jesus and his mother 



178 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

were present as honored and beloved guests. His 
gentleness and affability led his mother to feel that 
she might perhaps gain from him an aid to the inad- 
equate provision made for the hospitality of the occa- 
sion. His reply to her has been deemed abrupt and 
severe. That it was not so understood by his mother 
herself is evident from the fact that she did not ac- 
cept it as a refusal, but expected a compliance, and 
gave orders to prepare for it. It was necessary when 
among relatives in his family circle to express with 
great decision the idea that his miraculous powers were 
not to be considered as in any way under the control 
of his private and human affections, and that he must 
use them only as a Higher Power should direct. 

His presence at this wedding was significant of that 
divine love which ever watches over the family, and 
the wine that he gave symbolized that cheer and 
support which God's ever-present love and sympathy 
pours through all the life of the household. We 
gather incidentally from many seemingly casual state- 
ments that Jesus was often invited to feasts in the 
houses of both rich and poor, and cheerfully accepted 
these invitations even on the Sabbath-day. 

He seems to have been also especially attractive 
to little children; he loved them and noticed them; 
and it would seem from some parts of the gospel 
narrative as if the little ones watched for his com- 
ing and ran to his arms instinctively. Their art- 
less, loving smiles, their clear, candid eyes, reminded 
him of that world of love where he had dwelt before he 
came to our earth, and he said, " Of such is the king - 



THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF JESUS. 179 

dom of heaven." It was the sense that he loved 
little ones that led mothers to force their way with 
their infants through reproving and unsympathetic dis- 
ciples ; there was that about Jesus which made every 
mother sure that he would love her child, and that the 
very touch of his hands would bring a blessing upon it ; 
and when his disciples treated the effort as an intrusion 
it is said "Jesus, was much displeased." He did not 
merely accept or tolerate the movement, but entered 
into it with warmth and enthusiasm ; he did not coldly 
lay the tips of his sacred fingers on them, but took them 
up in his arms and laid his hands on them and blessed 
them ; he embraced them and held them to his heart 
as something that he would make peculiarly his own. 

It is no wonder, therefore, that Jesus was the chil- 
dren's favorite, and that on his last triumphal entrance 
into Jerusalem the hosannas of the children in the 
temple should have been so loud and so persistent as 
to excite the anger of the priests and scribes. They 
called on him to silence the little voices, as if they felt 
sure that he could control them by a word ; but that 
word Jesus refused to speak. The voices of these young 
birds of paradise were dear to him, and he said indig- 
nantly, " If these were forbidden to speak the very 
stones would cry out." 

But still more remarkable is the fact that Jesus was 
attractive to a class who as a general thing hate and 
flee from religious teachers. The publicans and sinners, 
the disreputable and godless classes, felt themselves 
strangely drawn to him. If we .remember how intensely 
bitter was the Jewish sense of degradation in being 



180 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

under Roman taxation, and how hardly and cruelly the 
office of collecting that tribute was often exercised, 
we may well think that only Jews who cared little for 
the opinions of their countrymen, and had little char- 
acter to lose, would undertake it. We know there are 
in all our cities desperate and perishing classes inhabit- 
ing regions where it would be hardly safe for a reputable 
person to walk. Yet in regions like these the pure 
apparition of Jesus of Nazareth walked serene, and all 
hearts were drawn to him. 

What was the charm about him, that he whose rule of 
morality was stricter than that of scribes or Pharisees 
yet attracted and drew after him the most aban- 
doned classes ? They saw that he loved them. Yes, 
he really loved them. The infinite love of God 
looked through his eyes, breathed in his voice 
and shed a persuasive charm through all his words. 
To the intellectual and cultured men of the better 
classes his word was, " Ye must be born again ;" but 
to these poor wanderers he said, " Ye may be born 
again. All is not lost. Purity, love, a higher life, 
are all for you," — and he said it with such energy, 
such vital warmth of sympathy, that they believed 
him. They crowded round him and he welcomed 
them; they invited him to their houses and he went; 
he sat with them at table; he held their little ones 
in his arms; he gave himself to them. When the 
Scribes and Pharisees murmured at* this intimacy, he 
answered, " The whole need not the Physician, but 
those that are sick ; I -came not to call the righteous, 
but sinners." His most beautiful parables, of the lost 



THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF JESUS. 181 

sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son, were all 
poured out of the fullness of his heart for them — and 
what a heart! What news indeed, to these lost ones, 
to be told that their Father cared for them the more 
because they were lost ; that he went after them because 
they wandered ; and that all around the pure throne 
of God were pitying eyes watching for their return, 
and strong hands Of welcome stretched out to aid 
them back. No wonder that the poor lost woman of 
the street had such a courage and hope awakened in 
her that she pressed through the sneering throng, and 
under the very eyes of Scribe and Pharisee found her 
refuge and rest at the gracious feet of such a Master. 
No wonder that Matthew the publican rose up at once 
from the receipt of custom and left all to follow that 
Jesus, who had taught him that he too might be a 
son of God. 

And we read of one Zaccheus, a poor worldly little 
man, who had lived a hard, sharp, extortionate life, 
and perhaps was supposed to have nothing good in 
him; but even he felt a singular internal stir and 
longing for something higher, awakened by this preacher, 
and when he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was pass- 
ing he ran and climbed a tree that he might look 
on him as he passed. But the gracious Stranger 
paused under the tree, and a sweet, cheerful voice 
said, "Zaccheus, make haste and come down, for to- 
day I must dine at thy house.'* Trembling, scarce 
able to believe his good fortune, we are told he came 
down* and received Jesus joyfully. Immediately, as 
flowers burst out under spring sunshine, awoke the 



1 82 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

virtues in that heart : " Lord, half my goods I give 
to the poor, and if I have taken any thing by false 
accusation I restore four fold." This shows that the 
influence of Jesus was no mere sentimental attraction, 
but a vital, spiritual force, corresponding to what was 
said of him : " As many as received him to them gave 
he power to become sons of God." 

It is a mistake to suppose that wicked people are 
happy in wickedness. Wrong-doing is often a sorrowful 
chain and burden, and those who bear it are often de- 
spairingly conscious of their degradation. 

Jesus carried with him the power not only to heal the 
body but to cure the soul, to give the vigor of a new 
spiritual life, the joy of a sense of recovered purity. 
He was not merely able to say, " Thy sins be forgiven 
thee," but also, " Go in peace ;" and the peace was real 
and permanent. 

Another reason for the attractiveness of Jesus was the 
value he set on human affections. The great ones of the 
earth often carry an atmosphere about them that withers 
the heart with a sense of insignificance. Every soul 
longs to be something to the object of its regard, and 
the thought, " My love is nothing to him," is a chilling 
one. But Christ asked for love — valued it. No matter 
how poor, how lowly, how sinful in time past, the love 
of a repentant soul he accepted as a priceless treasure. 
He set the loving sinner above the cold-hearted Phari- 
see. He asked not only for love, but for intimacy — 
he asked for the whole heart ; and there are many deso- 
late ones in this cheerless earth to whom it is a new life 
to know that a godlike Being cares for their love. 



THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF JESUS. 183 

The great external sufferings of Christ and the pro- 
phetic prediction that he should be a "man of sorrows " 
have been dwelt upon so much that we sometimes forget 
the many passages in the New Testament which show 
that the spiritual atmosphere of Christ was one of joy. 
He brought to those that received him a sense of rest 
and peace and joy. St. John speaks of him as " Light." 
He answered those who asked why his disciples did not 
fast like those of John, by an image which showed that 
his very presence made life a season of festivity: — " Can 
the children of the bride-chamber mourn while the 
bridegroom is with them ?" What a beautiful picture of 
a possible life is given in his teaching. God he speaks 
of as "your Father." All the prophets and teachers 
that came before spoke of him as "the Lord." Christ 
called him simply The Father, as if to intimate that 
Fatherhood was the highest and most perfect expression 
of the great Invisible. He said, therefore, to the toil- 
ing race of man : " Be not anxious, your Father in 
Heaven will take care of you. He forgets not even 
a little sparrow, and he certainly will not forget you. 
Go to him with all your wants. You would not forget 
your children's prayers; and your Father in Heaven 
is better than you. Be loving, be kind, be generous 
and sweet-hearted ; if men hate you, love and pray for 
them; and you will be your Father's children." 

See how the man Jesus, who was to his disciples 
the Master, Christ, had power to comfort them in 
distress, and how not only his own followers, but also 
those of his great forerunner, John, were naturally 
drawn to confide their troubles to him. 



184 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 

These disciples who took up the Baptist's disfigured 
body after spite and contempt and hate had done their 
worst on it, who paid their last tribute of reverence 
and respect amid the scoffs of a jeering world, were 
men — men of deep emotions and keen feelings ; and 
probably at that moment every capability of feeling 
they had was fully aroused. 

It appears from the first chapter of John, that he 
and others were originally the disciples of the Baptist 
during the days of his first powerful ministry, and had 
been by him pointed to Jesus, We see in other places 
that the apostle John had an intense power of indig- 
nation, and was of that nature that longed to grasp 
the thunderbolts when he saw injustice. It was 
John that wanted to bring down fire from heaven 
on the village that refused to shelter Christ, and can 
we doubt that his whole soul was moved with the 
most fiery indignation at wrong and cruelty like 
this? For Christ himself had said of the martyr thus 
sacrificed : " Among those that are born of women 
there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." 
He had done a great work; he had swayed the hearts 
of all his countrymen; he had been the instrument of 
the most powerful revival of religion known in his 
times. There had been a time when his name was in 
every mouth ; when all Jerusalem and Judaea, and 
beyond Jordan, thronged to his ministry — even the 
Scribes and Pharisees joining the multitude. And 
now what an end of so noble a man! Seized and 
imprisoned at the behest of an adulterous woman 
whose sin he had rebuked, shut up in prison, his 



THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF JESUS. 185 

ministry ended, all his power for good taken away, 
and finally finishing his life under circumstances which 
mark more than any other could the contempt and 
indifference which the great gay world of his day had 
for goodness and greatness ! The head of a national 
benefactor, of a man who had lived for God and man 
wholly and devotedly from his birth, was used as a 
foot-ball, made the subject of a court jest between the 
courtesan and the prince. 

Oh that it had pleased God to give us the particu- 
lars of that interview when the disciples, burning, 
struggling under pressure of that cruel indignity, 
came and told Jesus! Can we imagine with what 
burning words John told of the scorn, the contempt, 
the barbarity with which the greatest man of his time 
had been hurried to a bloody grave ? Were there not 
doubts — wonderings? Why did God permit it? Why 
was not a miracle wrought, if need were, to save him ? 
And what did Jesus say to them ? Oh that we knew ! 
We would lay it up in our hearts, to be used when in our 
lesser sphere we see things going in the course of this 
world as if God were not heeding. Of one thing we 
may be sure. Jesus made them quiet ; he calmed 
and rested them. 

And all that Jesus taught, he was. This life of 
sweet repose, of unruffled peace, of loving rest in an 
ever-present Father, he carried with him as he went, 
everywhere warming, melting, cheering ; inspiring joy 
in the sorrowful and hope in the despairing ; giving 
peace to the perplexed ; and, last and best of all, in his 
last hciirs, when he sought to cheer his sorrowful dis- 



1 86 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ciples in view of his death and one of them said, " Lord, 
show us the Father and it will suffice," he answered, 
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." The 
Invisible Jehovah, the vast, strange, mysterious Will 
that moves all worlds and. controls all destinies, reveals 
himself to us in the Man Jesus — the Christ. 

We are told of an Old Testament prophet that sought 
to approach God. First there was a mighty tempest; 
but the Lord was not in the tempest. There was a 
devouring fire ; but the Lord was not in the fire. There 
was an earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the earth- 
quake. Then there came at last a "still, small voice:" 
and when the prophet heard that he wrapped his face 
in his mantle and bowed himself to the earth. 

The tempest, the earthquake, the fire, are the Un- 
known God of Nature ; the still, small voice is that 
of Jesus ! 

It is to this Teacher so lovable, this Guide so pa- 
tient and so gracious, that our Heavenly Father has 
committed the care and guidance of us through this 
dark, uncertain life of ours. He came to love us, to 
teach us, to save us; and not merely to save us, but 
to save us in the kindest and gentlest way. He gives 
himself wholly to us, for all that he can be to us, 
and in return asks us to give ourselves wholly to him. 
Shall we not do it ? 




oto for It tit. 




Y God, I love Thee ! not because 
I hope for heaven thereby ; 
Nor because those who love Thee not 
Must die eternally. 

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me 

Upon the cross embrace ; 
For me didst bear the nails and spear, 

And manifold disgrace ; 

And griefs and torments numberless, 

And sweat of agony, — 
Yea, death itself; and all for one 

That was thine enemy. 

Then, why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 

Should I not love Thee well ? 
Not for the hope of winning heaven, 

Nor of escaping hell ; 

Not with the hope of gaining aught ; 

Not seeking a reward ; 
But as Thyself hast loved me, 

O ever-loving Lord, 

E'en so I love Thee, and will love, 

And in thy praise will sing ; 
Solely because thou art my God, 
And my eternal King. 

— St. Francis Xavier. 
187 



XVII. 




C|* C olmttttt of fans. 

" We saw one casting out devils, and he followed not us ; and we 
forbade him. And Jesus said, Forbid him not.'' 

HERE is nothing in which our Lord so far 
exceeds all his followers as in that spirit of 
forbearance and tolerance which he showed 
toward every effort, however imperfect, which was dic- 
tated by a sincere spirit. Human virtue as it grows 
intense is liable to grow narrow and stringent ; but 
divine love has an infinite wideness of allowance. 

We are told of the first triumphant zeal of the twelve 
apostles when, endued with miraculous power, they went 
forth healing the sick, casting out devils, and preaching 
the good news of the kingdom to the poor. They 
came back to Jesus exulting in their new success, and 
we are told they said unto him, "Lord, we saw one 
casting out devils in thy name, and we forbade him, 
because he followed not us." 

Jesus said unto them, " Forbid him not, for there 
is no man that will do a miracle in my name that will 
lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against 
us is on our side." 



[33 



THE TOLERANCE CE JESUS. 1 89 

Here our Lord recognizes the principle that those 
who seek what he is seeking, and are striving to do 
what he is doing, are in fact on his side, even although 
they may not see their way clear to follow the banner 
of his commissioned apostles and work in their com- 
pany. Christ's mission as he defined it was a mission 
of healing and saving, a mission of consolation and 
the relief of human misery; and this man who was 
trying to cast out the devils in his name was doing 
his work and moving in his line, although not among 
his professed disciples. 

Jesus always recognized the many " sheep not of 
this fold" which he had in this world — people who 
were his followers by unity of intention with what he 
intended, though they might never have known him 
personally. He tells the Jews, who believed in a nar- 
row and peculiar church, that " many shall come from 
the East and the West, and shall sit down with Abra- 
ham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven," 
and in his pictures of the last Judgment he makes the 
final award turn on the simple unity of spirit and pur- 
pose with Him in his great work of mercy for man- 
kind. 

We see intimated that the accepted ones are amazed 
to find themselves recognized as having shown per- 
sonal regard to Christ, and say, " Lord, when saw we 
thee hungry or athirst or in prison and ministered to 
thee ?" And the reply is, " Inasmuch as ye did it to 
one of the least of these my brethren, yc did it unto 
me." A more solemn declaration cannot be given, that 
our Lord accepts the spirit which is in unison with 



190 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

his great work of mercy for mankind, as the best 
offering of love to himself; and in this sense it is 
true that no man who would seek to do miracles of 
mercy in His spirit could lightly speak evil of him. 

In this case our Lord might have seen that the ar- 
rogant, dictatorial temper which had come upon his 
followers in the flush of their first success might have 
disgusted and repelled a sincere man who was really 
trying to help on the good work in which Christ was 
engaged; and perhaps he may now see, as he looks 
down among our churches here and there, some good 
man in his own peculiar way seeking to do the work 
of the Lord, yet repelled from following in the train 
of his professed disciples. Instead of forbidding such 
1 because they follow not us," he would have us draw 
them towards us by sympathy in the good they are 
doing, trusting in our Lord to enlighten them wher- 
ever they may need more distinct light. 

The Protestant must not forbid the Romanist mis- 
sion whose plain object seems to be to call sinners to 
repentance, and to lead professing Christians to a higher 
and holier life ; nor must the Romanist in the pride 
of ancient authority forbid the protestant Evangelist 
that is seeking to make known the love of Jesus. 
And there are men in our times, of pure natures and 
of real love for mankind, whose faith in divine reve- 
lation is shaken, who no longer dare to say they be- 
lieve with the " orthodox," but who yet are faithfully 
striving to do good to man, to heal the sick and cast 
out the devils that afflict society. Sad-hearted men 
are they often, working without the cheer that inspires 



THE TOLERANCE OF JESUS. 191 

the undoubting believer, often under a sense of the 
ban of the professed followers of Christ ; yet the in- 
finite tolerance of our Lord is leading them as well 
as those who more formally bear his name. 

It was Cyrus, the Persian king, who worshiped the 
Zoroastrian gods, that is called in the prophecy " God's 
shepherd;" to whom God says, "Cyrus, whose right 
hand I have holden, I girded thee, though thou hast 
not known me." 

Let us hope that there are many whose right hand 
Christ is holding, though they as yet know him not; 
for He it is who says : 

" I will bring the blind by a way they know not. I will make 
darkness light before them, and crooked things straight : these 
things will I do unto them and not forsake them." 

It pleased our Lord to number among the twelve 
apostles one of those natures which are constitution- 
ally cautious and skeptical. Thomas had a doubting 
head but a loving heart; he clung to Christ by affinity 
of spirit and personal love, with a slow and doubting 
intellect. Whether Jesus were the Messiah, the King 
of Israel, destined to reign and conquer, Thomas, 
though sometimes hoping, was somewhat prone to 
doubt. He was all the while foreboding that Christ 
would be vanquished, while yet determined to stand 
by him to the last. When Christ announced his pur- 
pose to go again into Judaea, where his life had been 
threatened, Thomas says — and there seems to be a 
despairing sigh in the very words — "Let us also go, 
that we may die with him." The words seemed to 
say, " This man may be mistaken, after all ; but, liv- 



192 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ing or dying, I must love him, and if he dies, I die 
too." 

Well, the true-hearted doubter lived to see his Lord 
die, and he it was, of all the disciples, who refused to 
believe the glad news of the resurrection. No mes- 
senger, no testimony, nothing that anybody else had 
seen could convince him. He must put his own hand 
into the print of the nails or he will not believe. 
The gracious Master did not refuse the test. " Reach 
hither thy finger and behold my hand, and reach hither 
thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faith- 
less but believing," he said, and the doubter fell at his 
feet and cried, "My Lord and my God!" 

There was but a gentle word of reproof: "Thomas, 
because thou hast seen me thou hast believed; blessed 
are they that have not seen and yet have believed." 
It is this divine wideness of spirit, this tolerance of 
love, . that is the most characteristic element in the 
stages which mark the higher Christian life. Such 
spirits as Fenelon, Francis de Sales, John Woolman, 
and the apostle Eliot, seem to have risen to the calm 
regions of clear-sighted love. Hence the maxim of 
Fenelon: "Only perfection can tolerate the imperfect." 
But we, in our way to those regions, must lay down 
our harsh judgments of others; we must widen our 
charity; and, as we bless our good Shepherd for his 
patience with our wanderings and failures, must learn 
to have patience with those of our neighbors. 



f t\ not frar $}rart k CriraMefr, 




OULS of men, why will ye scatter 

Like a crowd of frightened sheep? 
Foolish hearts, why will ye wander 
From a love so true and deep ? 
Was there ever kindest shepherd 

Half so gentle v half so sweet, 
As the Saviour, who would have us 
•Come and gather round his feet? 

It is God : his love looks mighty, 

But is mightier than it seems ! 
'Tis our Father, and his kindness 

Goes far out beyond our dreams. 
There's a wideness in God's mercy 

Like the wideness of the sea : 
There's a kindness in his justice 

Which is more than liberty. 



There is no place where earth's sorrows 
Are more felt than up in heaven ; 

There is no place where earth's failings 
Have such kindly judgments given ; 
193 



194 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind ; 
And the heart of the Eternal 

Is most wonderfully kind. 

But we make his love too narrow 

By false limits of our own ; 
And we magnify his strictness 

With a zeal he will not own. 
Pining souls, come nearer Jesus ; 

Come, but come not doubting thus ; 
Come with faith that trusts more freely 

II13 great tenderness for us. 

If our love were but more simple 

We should take him at his word, 
And our lives would be all sweetness 

In the sweetness of our Lord. 

— Frederick William Faber. 




ym [ bwZ imK 



XVIII. 



%\t Silent* of $tsa& 




N the history of our Lord's life nothing meets 
us more frequently than his power of reticence. 
It has been justly observed that the things that 
he did not say and do are as just a subject of admira- 
tion as the things that he said and did. 

There is no more certain indication of inward strength 
than the power of silence. Hence the proverb that 
speech is silver and silence is golden. The Church of 
the middle ages had her treatises on " The Grace of 
Silence." 

In the case of our Lord we have to remember first 
the thirty years of silence that preluded his ministry ; 
thirty years in which he lived the life of a humble 
artisan in the obscure town of Nazareth. That he was 
during those years revolving all that higher wisdom 
which has since changed the whole current of human 
society there is little doubt. That his was a spirit 
from earliest life ardent and eager, possessed with the 
deepest enthusiasm, we learn from the one revealing 
flash in the incident recorded of his childhood, when 

i95 



196 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



he entered the school of the doctors in the Temple 
and became so absorbed in hearing and asking questions 
that time, place and kindred were all forgotten. Yet, 
eager as he was, he made no petulant objection to his 
mother's recall, but went down to Nazareth with his 
parents and was subject to them. This ardent soul 
retreated within itself, and gathered itself up in silence 
and obedience. 

When, at the age of thirty, he rose in the syna- 
gogue of his native place and declared his great 
and beautiful mission it is quite evident that he took 
everybody by surprise. No former utterances, noth- 
ing in his previous life, had prepared his townsfolk 
for this. They said, " How knoweth this man letters ? 
Is not this the carpenter?" What habitual silence and 
reticence is here indicated ! For this was the same 
Jesus whose words, when he did speak, had that pro- 
found and penetrating power that stirred the hearts of 
men, and have gone on since stirring them as no other 
utterances ever did. But when he did speak his words 
were more mighty from the accumulated force of re- 
pression. They fell concentrated and sparkling like 
diamonds that had been slowly crystallizing in those 
years of silence ; they were utterances for time and 
for eternity. 

In like manner we see numerous indications that he 
withdrew from all that was popular and noisy and 
merely sensational with a deep and real distaste. So 
far as possible he wrought his miracles privately. He 
enjoined reticence and silence on his disciples. He 
said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observa- 



THE SILENCE OF JESUS. 197 

tion." He pointed to the grain of mustard seed and 
the hidden leaven as types of its power. 

In the same way we see him sometimes receiving in 
silence prayers for help which he intended to answer. 
When the Syro-Phenician woman cried to him to heal 
her daughter, it is said " he answered her never a word;" 
yet healing was in his heart. His silence was the mag- 
net to draw forth her desire, to intensify her faith and 
reveal to his disciples what there was in her. 

So, too, when word was sent from the sisters of Beth- 
any, " Lord, behold he whom thou lovest is sick," he 
received it in the same silence. It is said, "Jesus loved 
Martha and her sister and Lazarus ; when he had heard, 
therefore, that he was sick, he abode two days still in 
the same place where he was." In those two days of 
apparent silent neglect, how many weary hours to the 
anxious friends watching for him who could help, and 
who yet did not come ! But the silence and the 
wailing ended in a deeper joy at the last. The sorrow 
of one family was made the means of a record of the 
Saviour's tenderness and sympathy and his triumphant 
power over death, which is for all time and for every 
mourner. As he gave Lazarus back whole and unin- 
jured from the grave, so he then and there promised 
to do for every one who believes in him : " He that 
believeth on me shall never die." 

In the family of the Saviour was a false friend whose 
falseness was better known to the Master than perhaps 
to himself. He knew the falsity of Judas to his tn^t in 
the management of the famify purse, yet he was silent. 
He sought the sympathy of no friend ; he did not ex- 



198 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

pose him to the others. From time to time he threw 
out general warnings that there was one among them that 
was untrue — warnings addressed to his conscience alone. 
But he changed in no degree his manner toward him ; 
he did not withhold the kiss at meeting and parting, nor 
refuse to wash his feet with the others ; and the traitor 
went out from the last meeting to finish his treachery, 
leaving his brethren ignorant of his intended crime. 
This loving, forbearing silence with an enemy — keeping 
him in his family, treating him with unchanging love 
yet with warning faithfulness, never uttering a word of 
complaint and parting at last in sorrow more than anger 
— was the practical comment left by Jesus on his own 
words : " Love your enemies, that ye may be the children 
of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his 
sun to shine on the evil and on the good, and sendeth 
rain on the just and on the unjust." This, -the last, the 
highest grade in the science of love, is one that few 
Christians even come within sight of. To bear an 
enemy near one's person, perfectly to understand his 
machinations, and yet feel only unchanging love and 
pity, carefully to guard his character, never to communi- 
cate to another the evil that we perceive, to go on in 
kindness as the sunshine goes on in nature — this is an 
attainment so seldom made that when made it is hard to 
be understood. If the example of Jesus is to be the 
rule by which our attainments are finally to be meas- 
ured, who can stand in the judgment ? 

The silence of Jesus in his last trial before Herod 
and Pilate is no less full of sublime suggestion. We 
see him standing in a crowd of enemies clamorous, 



THE SILENCE OF JESUS. 199 

excited, eager, with false witnesses distorting his words, 
disagreeing with each other, agreeing only in one thing : 
the desire for his destruction. And Pilate says, "An- 
swerest thou nothing? Behold how many things they 
witness against thee." It was the dead silence that 
more than anything else troubled and perplexed the 
Roman Governor. After he has given up his victim 
to the brutalities of the soldiery, to the scourging and 
the crown of thorns, he sends for him again for a 
private examination. " Whence art thou ? Speakest 
thou not to me? Knowest thou not that I have 
power to crucify thee and power to release thee ?" In 
all the brief replies of Jesus there is no effort to clear 
himself, no denial of the many things witnessed against 
him. In fact, from the few things that he did say on 
the way to the cross, it would seem that his soul 
abode calmly in that higher sphere of love in which 
he looked down with pity on the vulgar brutality that 
surrounded him. The poor ignorant populace shout- 
ing they knew not what, the wretched scribes and 
chief priests setting the seal of doom on their nation, 
the stolid Roman soldiers trained in professional hard- 
ness and cruelty — he looked down on them all with 
pity. "Daughters of Jerusalem," he said to the weep- 
ing women, " weep not for me, but weep for yourselves 
and for your children." And a few moments later, 
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they 
do.' 5 

We are told by the apostles that this Jesus is the 
image of the invisible God. The silence of God in 
presence of so much that moves human passions is 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



one of the most awful things for humanity to con- 
template. But if Jesus is his image this silence is not 
wrathful or contemptuous, but full of pity and for- 
giveness. 

The silence and the great darkness around the cross 
of Calvary were not the silence of gathering wrath and 
doom. God, the forgiving, was there, and the way 
was preparing for a new and un equaled era of for- 
giving mercy. The rejected Jesus was exalted to the 
rigrjt hand of God, not to fulfill a mission of wrath, 
but to " give repentance and remission of sins." 




XIX. 



€ \t %tm\ of ftntt. 



|«^^ EACE ! Is there in fact such a thing as an 
jSSl attainable habit of mind that can remain at 
■"faij peace> no matter what external circumstances 
may be? No matter what worries; no matter what 
perplexities, what thwartings, what cares, what dan- 
gers; no matter what slanders, what revilings, what 
persecutions — is it possible to keep an immovable 
peace? When our dearest friends are taken from us, 
when those we love are in deadly danger from hour 
to hour, is it possible still to be in peace ? When our 
plans of life are upset, when fortune fails, when debt 
and embarrassment come down, is it possible to be 
at peace? When suddenly called to die, or to face 
sorrows that are worse than death, is it possible still 
to be at peace ? 

Yes, it is. This is the peculiarity of the Christian 
religion — the special gift of Christ to every soul that 
will receive it from him. In his hour of deepest 
anguish, when every earthly resort was failing him, 
when he was about to be deserted, denied, betrayed, 



202 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

tortured even unto death, he had this great gift of 
peace, and he left it as a legacy to his followers : 

" Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you. Not as the 
world giveth give I unto you." 

He says himself that his peace is not what the world 
giveth. It does not come from anything in this life ; 
it cannot be taken away by anything in this life ; it 
is wholly divine. As a white dove looks brighter and 
fairer against a black thunder-cloud, so Christ's peace 
is brightest and sweetest in darkness and adversity. 

Is not this rest of the soul, this perfect peace, worth 
having? Do the majority of Christians have it? 
Would it not lengthen the days and strengthen the 
health of many a man and woman if they could attain 
it ? But how shall we get this gift ? That is an open 
secret. St. Paul told it to the Philippians in one 
simple direction: 

" Be not anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and 
supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known 
unto God ; and the peace of God that passeth understanding shall 
keep your heart and mind." 

There we have it. 

Now if we look back to the history of these 
Philippians, as told in the Book of Acts, we shall see 
that when Paul exhorted them never to be anxious 
about anything, but always with thanksgiving to let 
their wants be known to God, he preached exactly 
what they had seen him practice among them. For 
this Philippian church was at first a little handful of 
people gathered to Jesus by hearing Paul talk in a 
prayer-meeting held one Sunday morning by the river- 



THE SECRET OF PEACE. 203 

side. There Lydia, the seller of fine linen from 
Thyatira, first believed with her house, and a little 
band of Christians was gathered. But lo ! in the very 
commencement of the good work a tumult was raised, 
and Paul and Silas were swooped down upon by the 
jealous Roman authorities, ignominiously and cruelly 
scourged, and then carried to prison and shut up with 
their feet fast in the stocks. Here was an opportunity 
to test their serenity. Did their talisman work, or did 
it fail ? What did the apostles do ? We are told : 
" At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises 
to God, and the prisoners heard them." That prayer 
went up with a shout of victory — it was as Paul 
directs, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. 
Then came the opening of prison doors, the loosing 
of bonds, and the jailer fell trembling at the feet of 
his captives, saying, " Sirs, what must I do to be 
saved?" And that night the jailer and all his house 
were added to the church at Philippi. So, about 
eleven years after, when Paul's letter came back from 
Rome to the Philippian church and was read out in 
their prayer-meeting, we can believe that the old 
Roman jailer, now a leading brother in the church, 
said, "Aye*! aye! he teaches just what he practised. 
I remember how he sung and rejoiced there in that 
old prison at midnight. Nothing ever disturbs him." 
And they remember too that this cheerful, joyful, 
courageous letter comes from one who is again a 
prisoner, chained night and day to a Roman soldier, 
and it gives all the more force to his inspiring direc- 
tion: "Be anxious for nothing— in everything, by 



204 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your 
requests be made known unto God." 

If Paul had been like us, now, how many excuses 
he might have had for being in a habitual worry ! 
How was he shut up and hindered in his work of 
preaching the gospel. A prisoner at Rome while 
churches that needed him were falling into divers 
temptations for want of him — how he might have 
striven with his lot, how he might have wondered why 
God allowed the enemy so to triumph. 

But it appears he was perfectly quiet, " I know how 
to be abased, and how to abound," he says; "every- 
where, and in all things, I am instructed both to be 
full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer need, 
I can do all things through Christ that strengthened 
me." 

But say some, " Do you suppose if you go to God 
about every thing that troubles you it will do any 
good? If you do ask him for help, will you get it?" 

If this means, Will God always give you the blessing 
you want, or remove the pain you feel, in answer to 
your prayer? the answer must be, Certainly not. 

Paul prayed often and with intense earnestness for 
the removal of a trial so sharp and severe that he 
calls it a thorn in his flesh. It was something that 
he felt to be unbearable, and he prayed the Lord to 
take it away, but the Lord did not ; he only said to 
him, " My grace is sufficient for thee. My strength 
is made perfect m weakness." 

The permission in all things to let our requests be 
made known to God would be a fatal one for us if it 



THE SECRET OF PEACE. 



205 



meant that God would always give us what we ask. 
When we come to see the record of our life as it is 
written in heaven, we shall see some of our best 
occasions of thankfulness under the head of "prayers 
denied." 

Did you ever see a little child rushing home from 
school in hot haste, with glowing cheeks and tearful 
eyes, burning and smarting under some fancied or real 
injustice or injury in his school life? He runs through 
the street; he rushes into the house; he puts off every 
one who tries to comfort him. " No, no ! he doesn't 
want them; he wants mother; he's going to tell 
mother." And when he finds her he throws himself 
into her arms and sobs out to her all the tumult of 
his feelings, right or wrong, reasonable or unreason- 
able. " The school is hateful; the teacher is hard, and 
the lessons are too long; he can't learn them, and 
the boys laugh at him, and won't she say he needn't 
go any more?" 

Now, though the mother does not grant his foolish 
petitions, she soothes him by sympathy; she calms him; 
she reasons with him; she inspires him with courage 
to meet the necessary trials of school-life — in short, her 
grace is sufficient for her boy; her strength perfects his 
weakness. He comes out tranquilized, calm, and happy 
— not that he is going to get his own foolish wishes, 
but that his mother has taken the matter in hand and 
is going to look into it, and the right thing is going to 
be done. 

This is an exact illustration of the kind of help 
it is for us "in every thing by prayer to make known 



206 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

our requests to God." The very act of confidence is 
in itself tranquilizing, and the Divine sympathy meets 
and sustains it. 

A large class of our annoyances and worries are 
extinguished or lessened by the very act of trying to 
tell them to such a person as Jesus Christ. They are 
our burning injuries, our sense of wrong and injustice 
done us. When we go to tell Jesus how cruelly and 
wickedly some other Christian has treated us, we im- 
mediately begin to feel as a child who is telling his 
mother about his brother — both equally dear. Our 
anger gradually changes to a kind of sorrow when we 
think of Him as grieved by our differences. After all, 
we are speaking of one whom Christ is caring for and 
bearing with just as he is caring for us, and the thought 
takes away the edge of our indignation ; a place is 
found for peace. 

Then there is still another class of troubles that 
would be cut off and smothered altogether by the 
honest effort to tell them to our Saviour. All the 
troubles that come from envy, from wanting to be as 
fine, as distinguished, as successful as our neighbors ; 
all the troubles that come from running races with our 
neighbors in dress, household show, parties, the strife 
"who shall be the greatest" transferred to the little 
petty sphere of fashionable life — ah, if those who are 
burdened with cares of this kind would just once hon- 
estly bring them to Jesus and hear what he would 
have to say about them ! They might leave them at 
his feet and go away free and happy. 

But whatever burden or care we take to Jesus, if we 



THE SECRET OF PEACE. 207 

would get the peace promised, we must leave with Him 
as entirely as the little child leaves his school troubles 
with his mother. We must come away and treat it as 
a finality. We must say, Christ has taken that. Christ 
will see about it. And then we must stop thinking 
and worrying about it. We must resolve to be sat- 
isfied with whatever may be his disposal of the matter, 
even if it is not at all what we would have chosen. 

Paul would much sooner have chosen to be free and 
travel through the churches, but Christ decided to al- 
low him to remain a chained prisoner at Rome, and 
there Pa^il learned to rest, and he was happy in Christ's 
will. Christ settled it for him, and he was at peace. 

If, then, by folloAving this one rule we can always 
be at rest, how true are the lines of the hymn now so 
often sung : 

" Oh, what joy we often forfeit ! 
Oh, what needless pain we bear! 
All because we do not carry 
Everything to God in prayer." 




XX. 



Cftf C|nr:| of t\t Itotar. 




HAT is the true idea of a Christian church, 
and what the temper and spirit in which its 
affairs should be conducted ? 

For this inquiry certainly we are not to go back to 
New England or Cotton Mather primarily, nor yet to 
the earlier Anglican authorities, or the long line 
of Roman precedent, and the Fathers of the Church, 
nor even to the Apostolic churches, but to Jesus 
Christ himself, and to the earliest association that 
could be called a Christian church. 

There is a difference in this discussion between the 
Church and a church. The Church is the great generic 
unity or outside organization; a church is a society 
related to the whole, as a private family to the State. 

In the time of our Lord the generic body — the 
Church of God — was the Jewish church. Jesus was a 
regularly initiated member of that church, and very 
careful never to depart from any of its forms or re- 
quirements. He announced in the Sermon on the 
Mount that, in regard to the Jewish law, he was not 

208 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 209 

come to destroy but to fulfill. He said distinctly to his 
disciples : " The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' 
seat: all thing therefore whatsoever they bid you ob- 
serve, that observe and do ; but do ye not after their 
works, for they say and do not." The Apostles never 
separated formally from the Jewish church. They 
were so careful in this regard that they on one occa- 
sion induced St. Paul, who was reported to be a schis- 
matic, to go in a very marked and public manner into 
the Jewish temple and conform to the Jewish ritual; 
and when he addressed a company of Jews on one oc- 
casion he commenced with the words : " Men and 
brethren, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee." 
He elsewhere speaks of the perfectness of his initia- 
tion into all the customs and privileges of the national 
church — that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. 

The Christian church arose inside the Jewish church, 
exactly as the Methodists arose inside the Church of 
England. They were a society professing subjection 
and obedience to the national church in all respects 
where the higher law of God did not require them to 
go against earthly ordinances. Thus, when the Jewish 
Sanhedrim forbade the Apostles to preach in the name 
of Jesus, they answered, "Whether it be right in the 
sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto 
God, judge ye" In like spirit did John Wesley and 
his ministers ansv/er the bishops when they tried to 
shut their mouths from preaching the gospel to the 
poor of England. 

But in the meantime it is to be remembered that 
the Lord Jesus gradually formed around himself as a 



210 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

personal center an organization of disciples, both men 
and women. This band of disciples may be looked 
upon as the seed form of the Christian church, and 
the order of their union having been administered 
immediately by the Master must be studied as convey- 
ing the best example of the spirit and temper, though 
not necessarily the exact form, in which all churches 
should be constituted. 

That this company of believers was regularly organ-- 
ized, and perfectly recognized as an organization, ap- 
pears from a passage in Acts, where it is said that after 
the ascension of our Lord this little church came to- 
gether and abode together for several days. The 
names of many of them are given — the eleven Apos- 
tles, the mother of Jesus, his brethren, and several 
others, called in the enumeration "the women," are 
mentioned, and it is further stated that " the number 
of them was about one hundred and twenty." 

St. Paul indeed speaks of an occasion on which 
Christ, after his resurrection, appeared to five hundred 
disciples at once, of whom he says the greater part 
were living when he wrote. This hundred and twenty 
were probably such a portion of the whole company 
of disciples as had their residence in and about Jeru- 
salem, and could therefore conveniently assemble 
together. We first see them called together to perform 
a corporate act in filling a vacancy among their 
officers. The twelve by the appointment of the Lord 
had occupied a peculiar position of leadership. The 
place of one of these being vacated by the death of 
Judas, the little church is summoned to assist in the 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 211 

election of a successor. The speech of Peter is 
remarkable as showing that he considered the persons 
he addressed as a body competent to transact business 
and fill vacancies. After relating the death and fate 
of Judas, he ends by saying, " Wherefore, from these 
men that have co?npanied with us all the time that the 
Lord Jesus went in and out among us must one be 
ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." 
Here, then, are all the evidences of a regularly trained 
church already in existence when our Lord left the 
world. 

But if we look at the 20th chapter of John we shall 
see that the little company that performed this act had 
been previously ordained and inspired by Jesus, and 
wisdom had been promised to guide their proceedings. 

It is said that immediately after Christ's resurrec- 
tion — after he had appeared to Mary Magdalene — he 
suddenly appeared in an assembly of the disciples, 
showed them his hands and his side, said to them, 
" Peace be unto you," breathed on them, and said, 
" Receive ye the Holy Ghost : whose soever sins ye 
remit they are remitted unto them, and whose soever 
sins ye retain they are retained." The disciples spoken 
of here were the whole company of believers who yet 
remained faithful — not merely the eleven, since one of 
the eleven at least was absent. 

The words of the promise are not to be super- 
stitiously interpreted, as they have been, as giving an 
arbitrary, irresponsible power to an aristocracy in the 
church, but as expressing this great truth : that when- 
ever a body of Christians are acting under the in- 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



fluence of the Holy Spirit, under a high and heavenly 
state of Christian feeling, their decisions will be in 
sympathy with God and be ratified in Heaven. It is 
only to those who receive the Holy Ghost that such 
power pertains. 

Having shown, then, that Christ left a trained, in- 
spired, ordained church of believers to perpetuate his 
work on earth, it now becomes interesting to go back 
and watch the process by which he trained them. 

The history of the formation and gradual education 
of this church is interesting, because, although the 
visible presence of the Master made it differ from any 
subsequent church, yet the spirit and temper in which 
he guided it are certainly a model for all. Christ's 
visible presence relieved them from all responsibility 
as to discipline. He governed personally, and settled 
every question as it rose. In this respect no other 
church can be like it. But the invisible Christ, the 
Christ in the heart of ail believers, ought to be with 
every church, that it may be carried on in spirit as 
Christ conducted his. 

In the first place, then, Christ carried on this his first 
church as a family, of which he was the father, and in 
which the law was love. He said to his disciples, 
"All ye are brethren;" he addressed them habitually 
as " children," sometimes as "little children," and laid 
on them with emphasis a new commandment, that they 
should love one another as he had loved them. The 
old commandment, given by Moses, was, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thyself; the new commandment 
of Christ was, Love one another as I have loved you — 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 213 

better than self. St. John interprets this thus : Hereby 
we perceive the love of God, because he laid down 
his life for us. We ought also to lay down our lives 
for the brethren. 

This church or family of Christ was very wide and 
free in its invitation to any to join, and many did join 
themselves, so that at times portions of them traveled 
with him as a missionary family from place to place. 

Thus, in Luke viii., we read that "it came to pass 
that he went through every city and village preaching 
and showing the glad tidings of the kingdom; and the 
twelve were with him, and certain women whom he 
had healed of evil spirits and infirmities; Mary, called 
Magdalene, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod's 
steward, and Susanna, and many others, who also 
ministered unto him of their substance." 

This co-operation of women in the missionary church 
would in some countries have given an occasion of 
offense and scandal. But the laws and institutions of 
Moses had prepared a nation in which the moral and 
religious mission of woman was fully recognized. 
Prophetesses and holy women, inspired by God, had 
always held an important place in its history, and it 
was in full accord with the national sense of propriety 
that woman should hold a conspicuous place in the 
new society of Jesus. It is remarkable, too, that the 
bitterest and most vituperative attacks on the charac- 
ter of Jesus which appeared in early centuries never 
found cause of scandal in this direction. 

These pious women exercised, for the benefit of our 
Lord and his disciples, the peculiar gifts of their sex — 



214 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

they ministered to them as women best know how. 
One of them was the wife of a man of high rank in 
Herod's court. Several of them appear to have been 
possessed of property. Some of them, however, were 
reclaimed women of formerly sinful life, but now re- 
deemed. The wife of Herod's steward, and the spotless 
matron, the mother of James and John, did not scru- 
ple to receive to their fellowship and sisterly love the 
redeemed Mary Magdalene, " out of whom went seven 
devils." 

The contributions for the support of this mission 
church became so considerable, and the care of pro- 
viding for its material wants so onerous, as to require 
the services of a steward, and one of the twelve, who 
had a peculiar turn for financial cares, was appointed 
to this office. Judas made all the purchases for the 
company, dispensed its charities, and, as financier, felt 
at liberty to comment severely on the " waste" shown 
by the grateful Mary. 

It seems that Judas was a type of that class of men 
who seek the church from worldly motives.. The treat- 
ment of this treacherous fiiend by Jesus is a model 
that cannot be too earnestly studied by every Chris- 
tian. St. John says, " Jesus knew from the beginning 
who they were that believed not, and who should 
betray him." But he carried himself towards him 
with the same unvarying and tender sweetness that 
he showed to all the rest. He was Love itself. He 
could not possibly associate with another without 
love, and there was something peculiarly delicate and 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 215 

forbearing in his treatment of Judas (as is more fully 
considered in our next chapter). 

He might easily have exposed him before his breth- 
ren, but he would not do it. 

It seems from the narrative that even when Judas 
left the little company to complete his crime, the 
simple-hearted disciples knew not where he was going. 

There was no calling him to account, no exposure, 
no denunciation, no excommunication. 

Why this care, this peculiar reticence, on the Mas- 
ter's part? It was a part of his system of teaching 
his family what he meant when he said, Love your 
enemies. It was a way of teaching that, when they 
came to understand it fully, they never would forget. 
Moreover, during his whole life, in all his teachings to 
this little church, his main object was that they should 
be rooted and grounded in that kind of love which no 
injury, or cruelty, or perfidy can change, the kind of 
love which he showed when he prayed for those who 
were piercing his hands and feet. But he found them 
not apt scholars. They were apt and ready in the 
science of wrath. With them the way of anger and 
what is called righteous indignation went down hill, but 
he always held them back. When a village refused to 
receive the Master, it was James and John who were 
ready to propose to call down fire from heaven, as Elias 
did. But he told them they knew not what manner of 
spirit they were of; the mission of the Son of Man was 
to save — not to kill. 

As a delicate musician shudders to strike a discord, so 
Jesus would not excite among his little children the tu- 



216 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

mult of wrath and indignation that would be sure to 
arise did they fully know the treachery of Judas. He 
so carried himself that the evil element departed from 
them without a convulsion, by the calm expulsive force 
of moral influences. He bore with Judas patiently, 
sweetly, lovingly, to the very last. He kept the knowl- 
edge of his treachery in his own bosom till of his own 
free will the traitor departed. 

There is something so above human nature in this — it 
is such unworldly sweetness, such celestial patience, that 
it is difficult for us at our usual level of life to under- 
stand it. It is difficult to realize that these expressions 
of love which Jesus continued to Judas were not a 
policy, but a simple reality — that he loved and pitied the 
treacherous friend as a mother loves and pities the un- 
worthy son who is whitening her hair and breaking her 
heart, and that the kiss he gave was always sincere. 

It is an example, too, that may with advantage be 
studied in conducting the discipline of a church. Here 
was the worst of criminals meditating the deepest in- 
juries, the worst of crimes, in the very bosom of the 
infant church, yet our Lord so bore with him, so ruled 
and guided his little family that there was no quarrel 
and struggle — that the very best and most was made of 
his talents as long as they could be used for good — and 
when he departed the church was not rent and torn as a 
demoniac by the passage from them of an evil spirit. 

But there were other respects in which Jesus trained 
his church, besides that of managing a discordant ele- 
ment within it. 

There were many who would become disciples from 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 217 



sudden impulse or sympathy, who had not the moral 
stamina to go on to spiritual perfection. Aware of 
this, the Master, while ever gracious, every ready to 
receive, exacted no binding pledge or oath. He dis- 
played no eagerness to get men to commit themselves 
in this way, but rather the reverse. Whoever came 
saying, " Lord, I will follow thee," met a gracious re- 
ception. Yet the seeker was warned that he must take 
up his cross, and that without this he could not be a 
disciple. He was admonished to count the cost, lest 
he should begin to build and not be able to finish. In 
some cases, as that of the young nobleman, the tests 
proposed were so severe that the man went away sor- 
rowful ; and yet, for all this, the heart of the Master 
was freely open to all who chose to follow him. 

But as Jesus would take none without full warning 
of the stringency of his exactions, so he would retain 
none a- moment beyond the time when their hearts were 
fully in it. Free they were to come as God's love is 
free — free also to go, if on trial they found the doctrine 
or discipline too hard for them. Christ gathered his 
spiritual army on the principles on which Moses com- 
manded that the army of Israel should be gathered for 
battle, when proclamation was made that any one who 
for any reason was not fully in good heart should go 
home, " What man is fearful or faint-hearted, let him 
go and return to his house, lest his brethren's heart 
faint as well as his." 

There is a very striking passage in the sixth chapter 
of John's Gospel, where Jesus, in the most stringent 
and earnest manner, spoke of the necessity of eating his 



2i8 ' FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

flesh and drinking his blood ; or, in other words, of an 
appropriating and identifying union of soul with him- 
self aa constituting true discipleship. This expose of 
the inner depths of real spiritual life repelled some, as 
it is written : 

"Many, therefore, of his disciples said: This is a hard saying. 
Who can hear it ? When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples 
murmured, he said : Doth this offend you ? . . . But there are 
some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning 
who they were who believed not and who should betray him." 

From that time, we are told, many of his disciples 
went back and walked no more with him. They left 
the church ; and we read of no effort to discipline or 
retain them. The spiritual life of the church expelled 
them by the law of moral repulsion; they felt they were 
not of it, and they left, and were suffered to leave. 
The only comment we read of as being made by the 
Lord was this : " Then said Jesus to the twelve : Will 
ye also go away?" There was the door, freely open, 
would they, too, go ? Then said Peter : " Lord, to 
whom should we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal 
life, and we believe and are sure that thou art the 
Christ." 

We can see here what was the' sifting process by 
which our Lord kept his little church pure. It was 
the union of vivid spirituality with perfect freedom. 
The doors of entrance and of exit were freely open; 
and those who could not bear the intense and glowing 
spiritual life were at all times free to depart; in the 
words subsequently used by the apostle, " they judged 
themselves unworthy of eternal life." Hence, like a 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 219 

vigorous human body, Christ's little church threw out 
from itself the unvital members, and kept itself healthy 
and strong. This perfect freedom to depart at any 
time constituted the strength of the little order. Its 
members were held together, not by a dead covenant, 
not by a conventional necessity, not by past vows ut- 
tered in high excitement — but by a living choice of 
the soul, renewed from moment to moment. Even the 
twelve had presented to them the choice to go away, 
and took anew their vow of constancy. Hence it was 
that even the astounding horrors of the sudden fall — 
the crucifixion of the Master — did not break their 
ranks. There were none left but those so vitally united 
to him, so "one with him" that, as he said, they 
" lived by him." He was their life; they followed him 
to the cross and to the grave ; they watched the sep- 
ulcher, and were ready to meet him in the resurrection 
morning. It was this tried and sifted remnant to 
whom he appeared when the doors were closed, after 
the resurrection, on whom he breathed peace and the 
Holy Ghost, and whose spiritual judgments and de- 
cisions he promised should thereafter be ratified in 
heaven. 

This little company were, as nearly as human beings 
can be, rooted and grounded in perfect love. The 
lesson of their lives had been love, taught them by 
precept from day to day, as he harmonized their con- 
tentions and repressed their selfish ambitions ; and by 
example, as he persistently tolerated, loved, bore with 
a treacherous friend in his own family. 

It was necessary that they should be prepared to ex- 



220 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



ercise power, for power was about to be entrusted to 
them. It was necessary to prepare them to be the 
governors of the future Christian Church. But he was 
unwearied in efforts to make them understand that 
superiority must only be a superiority in doing and 
suffering for others. When the mother of James and 
John asked the highest two offices for her two sons, 
he looked at her with a pathetic sadness. Did she 
know what she was asking ? Did she know that to be 
nearest to him was to suffer most ? He answered : 
"You know not what you ask. Can you drink of the 
cup that I shall drink, and be baptized with my bap- 
tism?" And when they ignorantly said, "We are able," 
he said that the place of superiority was not his to 
give by any personal partiality, but was reserved for 
the appointment of the Father. But the ambitious 
spirit now roused had spread to the other disciples. 
It is said that when the ten heard it they were indig- 
nant with James and John. But Jesus called them to 
him and said : " Ye know that they that are accounted 
to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, 
and their great ones exercise authority upon them. 
But it shall not be so among you ; but whosoever 
shall be great among you let him be your minister, 
and whosoever will be the chiefest let him be servant 
of all; for even the Son of man came not to be min- 
istered unto, but to minister, and give his life a ransom 
for many." 

One of the very last acts of his life, and one of the 
most affecting comments on these words, was his wash- 
ing his disciples' feet as a menial servant — a last sig- 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 22 1 

nificant act, which might almost be called a sacrament, 
since by it he, in view of his dying hour, put this 
last impressive seal on his teaching of humanity and 
brotherly love. 

The contest which should be the greatest, in spite of 
all his efforts, all his teachings, all his rebukes, had 
only smouldered, not been extinguished, and was ready 
at any moment to flame out again, and all the way up 
to Jerusalem when he came to die they walked behind 
him quarreling over this old point. As a dying mother 
calling her children around her confirms her life-teach- 
ing by some last act of love never to be forgotten, so 
this Master and Friend before the last supper knelt 
in humility at the feet of each disciple and washed 
and wiped them, and then interpreted the act as a 
sign of the spirit in which leadership in his church 
should be sought : " If I, your Lord and Master, have 
washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's 
feet." In after years the disciples could not but re- 
member that Jesus knelt at the feet of Judas and 
washed them as meekly as those of all the rest ; and 
then they saw what he meant when he said, "Love your 
enemies." 

From first to last the teaching of Christ was one 
long teaching of the doctrine and discipline of perfect 
love. 

When the multitudes followed him, and he went 
into a mountain to give his summary of the new dis- 
pensation, we hear of no high, mystical doctrines. We 
hear doctrines against censoriousness, against the habit 
of judging others. We hear men cautioned to look 



22 2 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

on their own faults, not on those of others. We hear 
love like the perfect love of God set up as the great 
doctrine of the new kingdom — love which no injury, 
no unworthiness, no selfishness can chill, or alter, or 
turn aside; which, like God's providence, shines on 
the evil and unthankful, and sends rain on the just 
and the unjust — this mystery of love, deeper than the 
mystery of the Trinity, was what, from first to last, the 
Master sought to make his little church comprehend. 

This love to enemies, this forgiveness, was the hard- 
est of hard doctrines to them. " Lord, how often shall 
my brother transgress and I forgive him?" says Peter; 
"till seven times?" "Nay," answers Jesus, "till sev- 
enty times seven." "If thy brother trespass against 
thee seven times a day, and seven times turn again 
saying, ' I repent,' thou shalt forgive him." The Master 
taught that no religious ordinance, no outward service, 
was so important as to maintain love unbroken. If a 
gift were brought to the altar, and there it were discov- 
ered that a brother were grieved or offended, the gift 
was to be left unoffered till a reconciliation was sought. 

It is not merely with the brother who has given us 
cause of offense, but the brother who, however unrea- 
sonably, deems himself hurt by us, that we are com- 
manded to seek reconciliation before we can approach 
a Heavenly Father. 

A band of men and women thus trained in the school 
of Jesus, careful to look on their own faults, refraining 
from judging those of others, unselfish and lowly, seek- 
ing only to do and to serve, so perfected in a divine 
love that the most bitter and cruel personal injuries 



THE CHURCH OF THE MASTER. 223 

could not move to bitterness or revenge — such a church 
is in a fit state to administer discipline. It has the 
Holy Spirit of Jesus with it ; and it may be said, without 
superstitious credulity, of a church in that spirit that 
its decisions will be so in accordance with the will of 
God that " whose soever sins they remit are remitted, 
and whose soever sins they retain are retained." 

But where have we such a church ? 

The church of the Master was one of those beautiful 
ideals, fair as the frost-crystals or the dew-drops of 
morning. It required a present Jesus to hold it, and 
then with what constant watchfulness and care and 
admonition on His part was it kept! We can only 
study at his marvelous training, and gather some humble 
inspiration. It was this church of Jesus, the Master, 
this tried, sifted, suffering body of faithful men and 
women whose prayers brought down the Holy Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost, and inaugurated the Apostolic 
church. 




Christ's f flirt 




OD, named Love, whose fount Thou art. 
Thy crownless Church before Thee stands, 
With too much hating in her heart, 
And too much striving in her hands. 

Love as I loved you " — was the sound 

That on thy lips expiring sate ! 
Sweet words in bitter strivings drowned ! 

We hated as the worldly hate. 

Yet, Lord, thy wronged love fulfill, 

Thy Church, though fallen, before Thee stands ; 
Behold, the voice is Jacob's still, 

Albeit the hands are Esau's hands. 

Hast Thou no tears, like those bespent 

Upon thy Zion's ancient part? 
No moving looks, like those which sent 

Their sweetness through a traitor's heart? 

No touching tale of anguish dear, 

Whereby like children we may creep, 
All trembling, to each other near, 

And view each other's face, and weep? 

Oh move us — Thou hast power to move — 

One in the One Beloved to be : 
Teach us the heights and depths of love. 

Give thine — that we may love like Thee ! 

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 
224 



XXI. 



fttto. 



T is one of the mysteries in the life of our Lord 
that he was led by the immediate direction of 
the Father to incorporate into his little family, 
and to bring into the closest personal relations with him- 
self, an unsympathetic and adverse element that must 
have been a source of continual pain to him. 

It was after a whole night spent in prayer for the 
divine direction that the first twelve apostles were 
chosen ; and Judas also was one of them. The history 
of this man is a wonder and a warning. That there 
could possibly be a human being who could have such 
advantages, could rise to such a height of spiritual power 
and joy, and yet in the end prove to be utterly without 
any true spiritual life seems fearful. 

It would appear that Judas had at first a sort of 
worldly enthusiasm for Christ and his kingdom; that he 
received the divine gift of miracle-working; that he 
went forth preaching and healing, and' felt all the exulta- 
tion and joy which the sense of spiritual power and 
influence gives. Judas was among those who returned 

225 



226 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

from the first missionary tour in triumph, saying, " Lord, 
even the devils were subject unto us !" The grave an- 
swer of Jesus reminded them that it was of far more 
importance to be really accepted of God as true Chris- 
tians than to have the most brilliant gifts and powers. 

In our Lord's first Sermon on the Mount, which may 
be considered as an ordaining charge to his apostles, he 
had said to them that in the great final day of Judgment 
there would be many who would say unto him, " Lord, 
have we not prophesied in thy name, and in thy name 
cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful 
works ? and then will I say to them, I never knew you ; 
depart from me, ye that work iniquity." Everywhere in 
the New Testament these miraculous powers are spoken 
of as something of far less value than the true Christian 
spirit, and, if we may trust the word of our Master, many 
had them whom he will never acknowledge for his own. 

But the warning fell on the ear of Judas unheeded. 
Perhaps he did not himself know how selfish and self- 
seeking was his zeal for the coming kingdom. Generally 
speaking, the first person deceived by a man who plays 
a false part is himself. Judas appears not to have 
excited the suspicions of the little company of brethren. 
His shrewdness and tact in managing financial matters 
led them to appoint him the treasurer of the common 
family purse. Without doubt, what he saw of the 
enthusiastic love which Jesus excited, the ease with 
which he could make people willing to lay their fortunes 
at his feet, opened to his view dazzling golden visions. 
He saw himself treasurer of a kingdom unequaled in 
splendor and riches, when all the kingdoms of the world 



JUDAS. 227 

should be subject to his master. It was more than the 
reign of Solomon, when gold was to be as the stones of 
the street. 

If we notice our Lord's teachings delivered in the 
hearing of Judas, we must be struck with the explicit 
and forcible manner in which he constantly pointed out 
the danger of the worldly spirit which was growing 
upon that disciple. How solemn the picture of the rich 
man, absorbed in plans and calculations how to bestow 
his great wealth until God says to him, "Thou fool! 
this night shall thy soul be required of thee — then whose 
shall those things be that thou hast provided ?" " So," 
he adds, " is every one that layeth up riches, and is not 
rich towards God." Again, he tells them that it is easier 
for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for a rich 
man to enter into the kingdom of God. He asks them, 
What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world 
and lose his own soul ? 

We hear nothing of any replies that Judas makes 
to these teachings. He seldom is represented dramat- 
ically. Peter, James, John and Thomas, all present 
themselves vividly to our mind by the things that they 
say; but Judas is silent. The Master, who knew him 
so well, did not expose him to the others. He did 
not lessen their brotherly regard or interrupt the peace 
of his little family by any effort at expulsion. As his 
Father had chosen this member to be in intimate 
nearness to himself, Jesus accepted him, bore with 
him, loved him, and treated him to the last with the 
same unvarying sweetness that he showed to the more 
congenial natures. It is affecting to remember that 



228 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



the very act by which Christ was betrayed was one 
that showed that all the external habits of affection 
remained still unbroken between him and the traitor. 
The kiss of Jesus was sincere ; he loved this wretched 
man as heavenly beings love, and followed him with 
love to the last. 

It would seem that towards the last part of the life 
of Jesus the moral antagonism between himself and 
Judas grew more pronounced and intense. 

As the spiritual life of Jesus waxed brighter and 
stronger, so much the more vivid became the contrast 
between it and the worldly aims of the traitor. Judas 
saw the kind of worldly prosperity to which he had 
aspired receding. He saw that Jesus, instead of using 
his splendid miraculous powers to draw towards him 
the chiefs of his nation, was becoming every day more 
in antagonism with them. Instead of meeting the 
popular desire to make him a king he had drawn 
back from it, and by that very act lost many follow- 
ers. His extreme spiritual teachings had disgusted 
many of his disciples and led them to go back and 
walk no more with him. And now the talk of Jesus 
was more and more of persecutions and sufferings and 
death, as lying just before him. To a worldly eye all 
this looked like a fanatical throwing away of the very 
brightest opportunity for fame and fortune and domin- 
ion that ever was given to a leader. Judas became 
sullenly discontented, not yet ready openly to throw 
off all hopes of what might be got by adhering to his 
Master, bat yet in a critical and fault-finding spirit 
surveying all his actions. 



JUDAS. 229 



It is an awful thought that it was possible for a man 
to share the daily bread of Jesus, to be in his family, 
treated as a beloved child, to hear all his beautiful 
words, to listen to his prayers day after day, and yet, 
instead of melting, to grow colder and harder — to 
grow more earthly as his Master grew more heavenly, 
and to find this want of sympathy slowly hardening into ' 
a sullen enmity which only waited its hour to declare 
itself openly. Christ said to the unbelieving Jews, 
" Ye have both seen and hated both Me and my Father." 
Judas was fast preparing to join that party. 

According to the narrative of St. Matthew, it was 
after this rebuke in the matter of Mary that Judas 
went into negotiations with those who were plotting 
the destruction of Jesus. He was a disappointed man. 
He had joined -a party which he confidently expected 
to lead to triumph, success and wealth. Instead of this, 
Jesus had lost every opportunity, lost the favorable 
hour of popularity, and concentrated on himself the 
hatred of the most powerful men of the nation, and 
now was talking only of defeat and rejection. Judas 

His presence with the household was now that of a 
spy, watching his occasion but making no outward 
demonstration. He was in the little family circle that 
gathered in the upper room to eat the last passover 
supper. His Master bent at his feet and washed them, 
as he did those of the faithful ones, in that sacramental 
action when he showed them what he meant by true 
love. It was directly after this last act of affection that 



230 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Jesus openly declared his knowledge of the meditated 
treachery, for he said : " I speak not of you all, I know 
whom I have chosen ; but the Scripture must be fulfilled 
which saith, He that eateth bread with me hath lifted 
up his heel against me." Then with a deep sigh he 
adds in plain words, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
one of you shall betray me." 

It is a most lovely comment on the goodness of heart 
of these simple men that in so solemn a moment no 
one of them thought of criminating the other. Each 
one said tremblingly, u Lord, is it I V 

John, leaning down on his Master's breast, inquired 
privately who it was ; and Jesus gave him a private sign 
that it should be he to whom he gave a sop when he 
had dipped it. He dipped the sop, and gave it to 
Judas. Then Judas, still keeping up the show of 
innocence, said, like the rest, " Master, is it I?" Jesus 
answered, " Thou hast said it." 

It is said that " Satan entered into him" at this mo- 
ment. All the smouldering elements of meanness, 
disgust, dislike of Jesus, his teaching, his spirit and 
his mission were quickened by the presence of that 
invisible enemy who comes to the heart of man only 
when he is called by the congenial indulgence of 
wicked passions. 

Judas rose hastily, and our Lord added, " That thou 
doest, do quickly." He flung himself out and was 
gone. 

The miserable sum for which he sold his Mabter, 
though inconsiderable in itself, was probably offered as 
first wages in a new service. His new masters were 



JUDAS. 231 



the heads of Israel: all avenues of patronage and 
power were in their hands, and the fortune that he 
could not make on the side of Jesus he might hope 
1 to gather on that of his enemies. He may have com- 
pounded with his conscience by believing that the 
miraculous power of our Lord was such that there 
was no danger of a fatal termination. In fact, that 
his being taken might force him to declare himself 
and bring on the triumphant moment of victory. He 
might possibly have said to himself that he was at 
any rate acting the part of a mediator in bringing 
matters to a crisis, and perhaps forcing a favorable re- 
sult. For, when he found that Jesus was indeed a 
victim, he was overwhelmed with remorse and despair. 
He threw the wretched money at the feet of his 
tempters and departed and hanged himself, and went, 
as we are told, " to his own place." 

He went to the place for which he had fitted him- 
self, who, living in the very bosom of Jesus, had grown 
more and more unlike him every day. He left Christ 
— driven by no force but his own wicked will. To 
the last the love of God pursued him : his Master 
knelt and washed the very feet that were so soon to 
hasten to betray him. It was with a sorrowful spirit, 
a troubled heart, that Jesus said, " Woe unto that man 
by whom the Son of Man is betrayed : good were it 
for that man if he never had been born." 

Without attempting to solve the mysteries of this 
deepest of all tragedies, we may yet see some of the 
uses and purposes of it in regard to ourselves. 

Our Lord was appointed to suffer in all respects as 



232 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

his brethren ; and the suffering of bearing with antag- 
onistic and uncongenial natures is one that the provi- 
dence of God often imposes on us. There are often 
bound to us, in the closest intimacy, of social or family 
ties, natures hard and ungenial, with whom sympathy 
is impossible, and whose daily presence necessitates a 
constant conflict with an adverse influence. There 
are, too, enemies — open or secret — whose enmity we 
may feel yet cannot define. Our Lord, going before 
us in this hard way, showed us how we should walk. 
It will be appropriate to the solemn self-examina- 
tion of the period of Lent to ask ourselves, Is there 
any false friend or covert enemy whom we must learn 
to tolerate, to forbear with, to pity and forgive ? Can 
we in silent offices of love wash their feet as our 
Master washed the feet of Judas? And if we have 
no real enemies, are there any bound to us in the 
relations of life whose habits and ways are annoying 
and distasteful to us? Can we bear with them in 
love? Can we avoid harsh judgments, and harsh 
speech, and the making known to others our annoy- 
ance? Could we through storms of obloquy and evil 
report keep calmly on in duty, unruffled in love, and 
commending ourselves to the judgment of God? The 
examination will probably teach us to feel the' infinite 
distance between us and our Divine Ideal, and change 
censoriousness of others into prayer for ourselves. 



% 




J mxn Wink. 




"§tm$ faima m faabhm as a man, \t jjrnnbltfr \}mu\i t 
a»ib betame obedient xrnto btnfy, zbm i\t foai(r of % dross. 
Wtymfon <$O0 also (jaijj feigfelg jcsrHltcbr |jim, anb jgiben 
btm a $tam* fobulj is abobe *berg name ; ifyat at tb $Janu 
of fesus cberg krtee sboulb bobj." 



" Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it 
is written of me) to do thy will, O God." 



Clje peart of fans. 




HE Saviour, what a noble flame 
Was kindled in His breast, 
When, hasting to Jerusalem, 



He marched before the rest ! 

Good-will to men, and zeal for God, 
His every thought engross ; 

He longs to be baptized with blood, 
He pants to reach the cross. 

With all his sufferings full in view, 
And woes to us unknown, 

Forth to the task His spirit flew ; 
'Twas love that urged him on. 

Lord, we return Thee what we can; 

Our hearts shall sound abroad 
Salvation to the dying man, 
' And to the rising God ! 



And, while thy bleeding glories here 

Engage our wandering eyes, 
We learn our lighter cross to bear, 
And hasten to the skies. 

— William Cowper. 
233 



Palm Sunday. 



XXII. 




(Srrhtg uj) to fmtaalem. 

OTHING in ancient or modern tragedy is so 
sublime and touching as the simple account 
given by the evangelists of the last week of 
our Lord's earthly life. 

The church has since his ascension so devoutly 
looked upon him as God that we are in danger of 
losing the pathos and the power which comes from a 
consideration of his humanity. The apostle tells us 
that, in order that he might be a merciful and faithful 
high-priest, he was made in all respects like unto his 
brethren. He was a Jew. His national and patriotic 
feeling was intense. To him the sacred nation, the 
temple service, with all its hymns and prayers and 
ancient poetic recollections, were more dear than to 
any other man of his nation. The nation was his own, 
his peculiar, chosen people ; he was their head and 
flower, for whom the whole gorgeous ritual had been 
appointed, for whom the nation had been for centuries 
waiting. Apart from his general tenderness and love 
for humanity was this special love of country and coun- 

234 



GOING UP TO JERUSALEM. 235 

trymen. Then there was the love of his very own — 
the little church of tried, true, tested friends who had 
devoted themselves to him ; and, still within that, his 
family circle, for whom his love was strong as a father's, 
tender and thoughtful as a mother's. And yet Jesus 
went through life bearing in his bosom the bitter 
thought that his nation would reject him and instigate 
one of his own friends to betray him, and that all seem- 
ing success and glory was to end in a cruel and shame- 
ful death. He foresaw how every heart that loved him 
would be overwhelmed and crushed with a misery 
beyond all human precedent. 

It is affecting to read in the evangelists how often 
and how earnestly Jesus tried to make his disciples 
realize what was coming. " Let this saying sink down 
into your ears," he would say : " the Son of Man shall 
be delivered into the hands of men;" and then would 
recount, item by item, the overthrow, the agonies, the 
insults, the torture, that were to be the end of his loving 
and gentle mission. At various times and in various 
forms he took them aside and repeated this prophecy. 
And it is said that they " understood not his word ;" 
that "they were astonished;" that they "feared to ask 
him ;" that they " questioned one with another what 
this should mean." It seems probable that, warmed 
with the flush of present and increasing' prosperity and 
popularity, witnessing his victorious miracles, they had 
thrown this dark prophecy by, as something inexplicable 
and never literally to be accomplished. What it could 
mean they knew not, but that it could have a literal 
fulfillment they seem none of them to have even 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



dreamed. Perhaps they were like many of us, in our 
religion, in the habit of looking only on the bright, 
hopeful, and easily comprehensible side of things, and' 
letting all that is dark and mysterious slide from the 
mind. 

Up to the very week before his crucifixion the power 
and popularity of Jesus seemed constantly increasing. 
His miracles were more open, more impressive, more 
effective. The raising of Lazarus from the dead had set 
the final crown on the glorious work. It would appear 
that Lazarus was a member of a well-known, influential 
family, moving in the higher circles of Jerusalem. It 
was a miracle wrought in the very heart and center of 
knowledge and influence, and it raised the fame of the 
new prophet to the summit of glory. It is an affecting 
comment on the worth of popular favor that the very 
flood tide of the fame and glory of Jesus was just five 
days before he was crucified. On Monday — the day 
now celebrated in the Christian Church as Palm Sunday 
— he entered Jerusalem in triumph, with palms waving, 
and garlands thrown at his feet, and the multitudes going 
before and after, shouting Hosannah to the Son of David ; 
and on Friday of the same week the whole multitude 
shouted, " Away with him ! Crucify him ! Release unto 
us Barabbas ! His blood be upon us and upon our 
children!" and he was led through those same streets to 
Calvary. On these six days before the death of Jesus 
the historians have expended a wealth of detail, so that 
the record of what is said and done is more than that of 
all the other portions of that short life. 

There are many touches of singular tenderness con- 



GOING UP TO JERUSALEM. 237 

veyed in very brief words. Speaking of his final jour- 
ney from Galilee to Judasa, says one: "When the time 
came that he should be received up he set his face 
steadfastly to go to Jerusalem." Another narrates that 
when he was going up to Jesusalem he walked before 
his disciples, and as they followed him they were afraick/ 
Evidently he was wrapped in an electric cloud of 
emotion; he was swept along by a mighty influence — 
tides of feeling deeper than they could comprehend 
were rolling in his soul, and there was that atmos- 
phere of silence and mystery about him by which the 
inward power of great souls casts an outward sphere 
of awe about them. Still, as they walked behind, 
they had their political dreams of a coming reign of 
power and splendor, when the Judsean nation should 
rule the world, and they, as nearest to the Master, should 
administer the government of the nation — for it is said, 
by the way they "disputed who should be the greatest." 
He hears their talk, as a dying mother, who knows 
that a few hours will leave her children orphans, listens 
to the contentions of the nursery. He turns to them 
and makes a last effort to enlighten them — to let them 
know that not earthly glory and a kingdom are before 
them, but cruelty, rejection, shame and death. He 
recounts the future, circumstantially, and with what 
deep energy and solemn pathos of voice and manner 
may be imagined. They make no answer, but shrink 
back, look one on another, and are afraid to ask more. 
It would seem, however, that there was one in the band 
on whom these words made an impression. Judas evi- 
dently thought that, if this was to be the end of all, he 



238 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

had been taken in and deceived : a sudden feeling of 
irritation arises against One who having such evident 
and splendid miraculous power is about to give up in 
this way and lose his opportunity and suffer himself to 
be defeated. Judas is all ready now to make the best 
terms for himself with the winning party. The others 
follow in fear and trembling. The strife who shall be 
greatest subsides into a sort of anxious questioning. 

They arrive at a friendly house where they are to 
spend the Sabbath, the last Sabbath of his earthly life. 
There was a feast made for him, and we see him sur- 
rounded by grateful friends. By the fact that Martha 
waited on the guests and that Lazarus sat at the table 
it would appear that this feast was in the house of a 
relative of that family. It is said to have occurred in 
the house of " Simon the Leper" — perhaps the leper to 
whom Jesus said, " I will — be thou clean." ■ 

Here Mary, with the abandon which marks her 
earnest and poetic nature, breaks a costly vase of balm 
and sheds the perfume on the head of her Lord. It 
was an action in which she offered up her whole self — 
her heart and her life — to be spent for him, like that 
fleeting perfume. Judas expostulates, " To what pur- 
pose is this waste?" There is an answering flash from 
Jesus, like lightning from a summer cloud. The value 
that our Lord sets upon love is nowhere more ener- 
getically expressed. This trembling, sensitive heart 
has offered itself up wholly to him and he accepts 
and defends it. There is a touch of human pathos in 
the words, " She is anointing me for my burial." Her 
gift had all the sacredness in his eyes of a death- 



GOING UP TO JERUSALEM. 239 

bed act of tenderness, and he declares, " Wheresoever 
through the world this gospel shall be preached, there 
also shall what this woman hath done be told for a 
memorial of her." 

Judas slinks back, sullen and silent. The gulf be- 
tween him and his Master grows hourly more palpa- 
ble — as the nature that cannot love and the nature to 
whom love is all come in close collision. Judas and 
Christ cannot blend any more than oil and water, and 
the nearer approach only makes the conflict of nature 
more evident. 

On Monday morning, the day that we now celebrate 
as Palm Sunday, Jesus enters Jerusalem. We are told 
that the great city, now full of Jews come up from all 
parts of the world, was moved about him. We have 
in the book of Acts an enumeration of the varieties 
in the throng that filled Jerusalem at this time : " Par- 
thians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia and 
in Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phry- 
gia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of 
Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and 
Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians." When all these 
strangers heard the shouting, it is said the " whole 
city was moved, saying, Who is this ? And the multi- 
tude said, This is Jesus, the Prophet of Nazareth in 
Galilee." 

And what was He thinking of, as he came thus for 
the last time to the chosen city? We are told: "And 
when he drew near and beheld the city he wept over 
it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou in this 
thy day, the things that belong to thy peace ! but now 



240 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

they are hid from thine eyes." Then follows the 
prophetic vision of the destruction of Jerusalem — 
scenes of horror and despair for which his gentle 
spirit bled inwardly. 

One feature of the picture is touching: the children 
in the temple crying, " Hosannah to the Son of David !" 
The love of Jesus for children is something marked 
and touching. When he rested from his labors at 
eventide, it was often, we are told, with a little child 
in his arms — children were his favorite image for the 
heavenly life, and he had bid the mothers to bring 
thern to him as emblems of the better world. The 
children were enthusiastic for him, they broke forth 
into rapture at his coming as birds in the sunshine, 
loud and noisily as children will, to the great discom- 
fiture of priests and scribes. " Master ! bid them hush," 
they said. He turned, indignant — "If these should 
hold their peace the very stones would cry out." 
These evidences of love from dear little children were 
the last flower thrown at the feet of Jesus on his path 
to death. From that day the way to the cross was 
darker every hour. 




falm Stantaj. 



" And He answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold 
their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." — St. Luke xix. 40. 




ORD, by every minstrel tongue 
Be thy praise so duly sung, 
That thine angels' harps may ne'er 
Fail to find fit echoing here : 
"We the while, of meaner birth, 

Who in that divinest spell 
Dare not hope to join on earth, 
Give us grace to listen well. 

But should thankless silence seal 
Lips, that might half Heaven reveal, 

Then waken into sound divine 

The very pavement of thy shrine, 

Till we, like Heaven's star-sprinkled floor, 

Faintly give back what we adore : 

Childlike though the voices be, 

And untunable the parts, 
Thou wilt own the minstrelsy, 

If it flow from childlike hearts. 

— Keble's Christian Year. 



241 




j#%- a &3§*s 



Monday in Passion Week. 




XXIII. 

C|e farm $ig-Cm* 

URING the last week of the life of Jesus we 
see him under the most awful pressure of 
emotion ; the crisis of a great tragedy, which 
has been slowly gathering and growing from the begin- 
ning of the world, is now drawing on. The nation 
that he had chosen — that he had borne and carried 
through all the days of old — was now to consummate 
her ruin in his rejection. All his words and actions 
during the last week of his life were under the shadow 
of that cloud of doom which overhung the city of 
Jerusalem, the temple, and the people whom he had 
loved, so earnestly and so long, in vain. 

When going up to Jerusalem he walked before his 
disciples, silent and absorbed ; and they dared scarcely 
speak to him. Amid the triumphant shouts of the 
people that welcomed him to the city he paused on 
the verge of Olivet and wept over it. He saw the 
siege, the famine, the terror of women and helpless 
children, the misery and despair, the unutterable agonies 

of the sacking of Jerusalem, which has been a world's 

242 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 243 

wonder; and he broke forth in lamentation. -"Oh, that 
thou hadst known — even thou in this thy day — the 
things that belong to thy peace ! But now they are 
hid from thine eyes." 

All his discourses of this last week are shaded with 
the sad coloring and prophetic vision of coming doom, 
of a crime hastening to fulfillment that should bring a 
long-delayed weight of wrath and vengeance. 

His parables now turn on this theme. One day they 
tell of a husbandman intrusting a vineyard to the care 
of faithless servants; he sends messengers to overlook 
them; they beat one and stone another, till finally he 
sends his only and beloved son, and then they say, 
"Let us kill him;" and they catch him and cast him 
out of the vineyard and slay him. "What," he asks, 
" shall the Lord of the vineyard do to these husband- 
men ?" Again, he speaks of a feast to which all are 
generously invited, and all neglect or reject the invita- 
tion, and not only reject but insult and despise and 
ill-treat the messengers who bear the invitation; and 
tells how the insulted King sends the invitation to 
others, and decrees, " None of these men shall taste of 
my supper." He tells of a wedding feast, and of foolish 
virgins who slumber with unfilled lamps till the door 
of welcome is shut. He tells of a king, who, having 
entrusted talents to his servants, comes again to reckon, 
and takes away the talent of the unfaithful one and 
casts him to outer darkness. 

All these themes speak of the approaching rejection 
of the nation on whom God has heaped so many 



244 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

favors for many years. The thought of their doom 
seems to press down the heart of the Redeemer. 

The twenty-third chapter of Matthew contains Christ's 
last sermon in the Temple — his final words of leave- 
taking of his people; and a most dreadful passage it 
is. It is awful, it is pathetic, to compare those fearful 
words with his first benignant announcement at Naz- 
areth. Nothing in human language can be conceived 
more terrible than these last denunciations of the re- 
jected Lord and Lover of the chosen race. He exposes 
with scathing severity the hypocrisy, the greed, the 
cruelty of the leaders- of the nation; he denounces 
them as the true descendants of those who of old 
killed God's prophets and stoned his messengers, and 
ends by rising into the very majesty of the Godhead 
in declaring their final doom : 

" Fill ye up the measure of your fathers. Ye ser- 
pents ! Ye generation of vipers ! How can ye escape 
the damnation of hell ? Wherefore, behold, I send unto 
you prophets and wise men and scribes; and some of 
them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them ye 
shall scourge in your synagogues and persecute from 
city to city. That upon you might come all the 
righteous blood shed upon earth, from the blood of 
righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias*, the son of 



* See II. Chronicles xxiv., 20, 21. 

" And the spirit of the Lord came upon Zechariah, the son of 
Jehoida the priest, who stood among the people, and said, Why 
transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot 
prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord he also hath for- 
saken you. And they conspired against him and stoned him with 
stones in the court of the house of the Lord.'' These two instances, of 



THE BARREN FIG-TREE. 245 

Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the 
altar. Verily I say unto you all these shall come 
upon this generation ! 

" O Jerusalem ! Jerusalem ! thou that killest the 
prophets and stonest those that are sent unto thee — 
how often would I have gathered thy children together, 
even as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings 
— and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto 
you desolate, for I say that ye shall see me no more 
henceforth till ye say, Blessed is he that cometh in 
the name of the Lord." 

This was Christ's last farewell — his valedictory to 
those whom he had loved and labored for, and who 
would not come to him that He might give them life. 

To all these awful words was added the language of 
an awful symbol. In one of his parables our Lord had 
spoken of the Jewish nation under the figure of a tree 
which, though carefully tended year by year, bore no 
fruit. At last the word goes forth, " Cut it down!" 
But the keeper of the vineyard intercedes and prays that 
it may have a longer space of cultured care, and so 
be brought to fruit-bearing. This last week of our 
Lord's life he sets forth the solemn close of that 
parable by one of those symbolic acts common among 
the old prophets and well understood by the Jews. 

Approaching a fair and promising tree on his way into 



Abel and Zacharias, cited by our Lord from the very first and 
very last of the sacred historic books, seemed to cover the whole 
ground of their history. The variation as to the name of the 
prophet's father has many theories to account for it, any one of which 
is satisfactory. 



246 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

the city, he seeks fruit thereon, but finds it barren. There 
is a pause, and then a voice of deep sadness says, " No 
fruit grow on thee henceforth and forever !" and imme- 
diately the fig tree withered away. 

It was an outward symbol of that doomed city whose 
day of mercy was past. The awfulness of these last 
words and of this last significant sign is increased by 
the tenderness of Him who gave them forth. It is the 
Fountain of Pity, the All-Loving One, that uttered the 
doom — a doom made certain and inevitable not by 
God's will but by man's perversity. 

The lesson that we have to learn is the reality and 
awfulness of sin, the reality of that persistence in wick- 
edness that can make even the love of Jesus vain for our 
salvation. For what hope, what help, what salvation 
can there be for those who cannot be reached by His 
love? If they have seen and hated both him and his 
Father — what remains? 





f^v 



Cow fate 




ATE, late, so late ! and dark the night, and chill ! 
Late, late, so late ! but we can enter still." 
Too late ! too late ! ye cannot enter now. 



No light had we : for that we do repent ; 
And, learning this, the bridegroom, will relent." 
Too late ! too late ! ye cannot enter now. 

No light : so late ! and dark and chill the night ! 
O let us in, that ye may find the light !" 
Too late ! too late ! ye cannot enter now. 

Have we not heard the bridegroom is so sweet ? 
O let us in, tho' late, to kiss his feet !" 
No, no, too late ! ye cannot enter now. 

Convent Hy?nn y from " Guinevere ." 

—Alfred Tennyson, 




247 



Tuesday in Passion Week. 



XXIV. 



C-aiajrlas* 



Zkr. 



HE thought may arise to many minds, if Jesus 
was so lovely, so attractive and so beloved, 
how could it have been possible that he 
should be put to so cruel a death in the very midst of 
a people whom he loved and for whom he labored ? 

The sacred record shows us why. It was this very 
attractiveness, this very power over men's hearts, that 
was the cause and reason of the conspiracy against 
Jesus. We have a brief and very dramatic account of 
the meeting of the Sanhedrim in which the death of 
Christ was finally resolved upon, and we find that 
very popularity urged as a reason why he cannot be 
permitted to live. In John xi., 47, we are told 
that after the raising of Lazarus the Chief Priests and 
Pharisees gathered a council and said, " What do we ? 
this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus 
alone all men will believe on him, and the Romans 
will come and take away our place and nation." 

There is the case stated plainly, and we see that 
248 



CAIAPHAS. 249 



these men talked then just as men in our days talk. 
Do they ever resolve on an act of oppression or 
cruelty, calling it by its right name? Never. It is a 
'"sacrifice" to some virtue; and the virtue in this case 
was patriotism. 

Here is the Jewish nation, a proud and once power- 
ful people, crushed and writhing under the heel of the 
conquering Romans. They are burning with hatred of 
their oppressors and with a desire of revenge, longing 
for the Messiah that shall lead them to conquest and 
make their nation the head of the world. 

And now, here comes this Jesus and professes to be 
the long-promised leader; and what does he teach? 
Love and forgiveness of enemies; patient endurance 
of oppression and wrong ; and supreme devotion to 
the pure inner life of the soul. If Roman tax gather- 
ers distrain upon their property and force them to 
carry it from place to place, they are to meet it only 
by free good will, that is, willingness to go two miles 
when one is asked. If the extortionate officer seizes 
their coat, they are to show only a kindliness that is 
willing to give even more than that. 

They are to love their bitterest enemies, pity and 
pray for them and continue in unbroken kindness, 
even as God's sunshine falls in unmoved benignity on 
the just and the unjust! 

It must have inflamed these haughty, ambitious 
leadeis to fury to see all their brilliant visions of war 
and conquest and national independence melting away 
in a mist of what seemed to them the mere impossible 
sentimentalism of love. And yet this illusion gains 



250 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

ground daily; Christ is received in triumph at Jerusa- 
lem and the rulers say to each other, " Perceive ye 
how we prevail nothing ? behold the whole world is 
gone out after him." 

Now, in the Jewish Sanhedrim Christ had friends 
and followers. We are told of Joseph of Arimathea, 
who would not consent to the deeds of the council. 
We are told of Nicodemus, who before now had spoken 
boldly in the council, demanding justice and a fair 
hearing for Jesus. We may well believe that so ex- 
treme a course as was now proposed met at first strong 
opposition. There seems to have been some warm 
discussion. We may imagine what it was: that Jesus 
was a just and noble man, a prophet, a man all of 
whose deeds and words had been pure and beneficent, 
was doubtless earnestly urged. The advocates, it is true, 
were not men who had left all to follow him, or enrolled 
themselves openly as his disciples, but yet they could 
not consent to so monstrous an injustice as this. That 
the discussion produced strong feeling is evident from 
the excited manner in which Caiaphas sums up : " Ye 
know nothing at all, nor consider that it is better that 
one man should die than than the whole nation should 
perish." That was the case as he viewed it, and he 
talked precisely as men in our days have often talked 
when consenting to an injustice or oppression : — Say 
what you will of this Jesus; I will not dispute you. 
Admit, if you please, his virtues and good works ; still, 
he is a wrong-headed man, that will be the ruin of 
our nation. Either he must perish or the nation be 
destroyed. 



CAIAPHAS. 251 



And so, on the altar of patriotism this murder 
was laid as a sacrifice. And it was this same burn- 
ing, impatient national spirit of independence that slew 
Christ which afterwards provoked the Roman govern- 
ment beyond endurance, and brought upon Jerusalem 
wrath to the uttermost. 

The very children and grandchildren of Caiaphas died 
in untold miseries in that day of wrath and doom. The 
decision to reject Christ was the decision which de- 
stroyed Jerusalem with a destruction more awful than 
any other recorded in history. 

We are apt to consider the actors in this great tragedy 
as sinners above all others. But every day and every 
hour in our times just such deeds are being re-enacted. 

There were all sorts of sinners in that tragedy: 
Caiaphas, who sacrificed one whom he knew to be a 
noble and good man to political ambition ; Pilate, who 
consented to an acknowledged wrong from dread of 
personal inconvenience; Judas, who made the best of 
his time in selling out a falling cause to the new 
comers; Peter, the impetuous friend suddenly fright- 
ened into denial ; the Twelve, forsaking and fleeing in 
a moment of weakness; the multitude of careless 
spectators, those tide-waiters who turn as the flood 
turns, who shouted for Jesus yesterday because others 
were shouting, and turn against him to-day because 
he is unpopular. All these were there. On the other 
hand, there were the faithful company of true-hearted 
women that went with Jesus weeping on his way to 
the cross; that beloved disciple and the Mother that 
stood by him to the last; all these, both friends and 



252 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

foes, represent classes of people who still live and still 
act their part in this our day. 

" For, when under fierce oppression, 
Goodness suffers like transgresssion, 

Christ again is crucified ; 
But if love be there true-hearted, 
By no pain or terror parted, 

Mary stands the cross beside f 




arg at \\t Cross. 



Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother." 




WONDROUS mother ! since the dawn of time 
Was ever lov<e, was ever grief, like thine ? 
O highly favored in thy joy's deep flow, 
And favored, even in this, thy bitterest woe ! 

Poor was that home in simple Nazareth 

Where, fairly growing, like some silent flower, 

Last of a kingly race, unknown and lowly, 
O desert lily, passed thy childhood's hour. 

The world knew not the tender, serious maiden, 
Who through deep loving years so silent grew, 

Full of high thought and holy aspiration 

Which the o'ershadowing God alone might view. 

And then it came, that message from the highest, 
Such as to woman ne'er before descended ; 

The almighty wings thy prayerful soul o'erspread, 
And with thy life the Life of worlds was blended. 

What visions then of future glory filled thee, 
The chosen mother of that King unknown, 

Mother fulfiller of all prophecy 

Which, through dim ages, wondering seers had shown ! 

253 



254 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

Well did thy dark eye kindle, thy deep soul 
Rise into billows, and thy heart rejoice ; 

Then woke the poet's fire ; the prophet's song 

Tuned with strange burning words thy timid voice. 

Then, in dark contrast, came the lowly manger, 
The outcast shed, the tramp of brutal feet ; 

Again, behold earth's learned and her lowly, 
Sages and shepherds, prostrate at thy feet. 

Then to the temple bearing — hark again 
What strange conflicting tones of prophecy 

Breathe o'er the child, foreshadowing words of joy — 
High triumph blent with bitter agony ! 

O, highly favored thou, in many an hour 

Spent in lone musings with thy wondrous Son, 

When thou didst gaze into that glorious eye. 
And hold that mighty hand within thine own. 

Blest through those thirty years, when in thy dwelling 
He lived a God disguised with unknown power ; 

And thou his sole adorer, his best love, 
Trusted, revering, waited for his hour. 

Blest in that hour, when called by opening heaven 
With cloud and voice, and the baptizing flame, 

Up from the Jordan walked th' acknowledged stranger, 
And awe-struck crowds grew silent as he came. 

Blessed, when full of grace, with glory crowned, 
He from both hands almighty favors poured, 

And, though He had not where to lay his head, 
Brought to his feet alike the slave and lord. 

Crowds followed ; thousands shouted, " Lo, our King !" 
Fast beat thy heart. Now, now the hour draws nigh 



MARY AT THE CROSS. 255 

Behold the crown, the throne, the nations bend ! 
Ah, no ! fond mother, no ! behold him die ! 

Now, by that cross thou tak'st thy final station, 

And shar'st the last dark trial of thy Son ; 
Not with weak tears or woman's lamentation, 

But with high, silent anguish, like his own. 

Hail ! highly favored, even in this deep passion ; 

Hail ! in this bitter anguish thou art blest, — 
Blest in thy holy power with Him to suffer 

Those deep death-pangs that lead to higher rest. 

All now is darkness ; and in that deep stillness 
The God-man wrestles with that mighty woe; 

Hark to that cry, the rock of ages rending, — 
" 'T is finished !" Mother, all is glory now ! 

By sufferings mighty as his mighty soul 

Hath the Redeemer risen forever blest ; 
And through all ages must his heart-beloved 

Through the same baptism enter the same rest. 

— H. B. S." 




Wednesday in Passion Week. 



XXV. 



C|e foji of Christ* 




HE last chapters of St. John — in particular from 
the thirteenth to the seventeenth — are worthy, 
more than anything else in the sacred writings, 
of the designation which has been given them, The 
Heart of Jesus. They are the language of the most 
intimate love, to the most intimate friends, in view of 
the greatest and most inconceivable of human sorrows. 
For, though the disciples — poor, humble, simple men — 
were dazed, confused, and misty up to the very moment 
when they were entering upon the greatest sorrow of 
their life, the Master who was leading them saw it all 
with perfect clearness. He saw perfectly not only the 
unspeakable humiliation and anguish that were before 
himself, but the disappointment, the terror, the dismay, 
the utter darkness and despair that were just before 
these humble, simple friends who had invested all their 
love and hope in him. 

When we think of this it will seem all the more 
strange, the more unworldly and divine to find that in 

256 



THE JOY OF CHRIST. 257 

these very chapters our Lord speaks more often, and 
with more emphasis, of Joy than in any other part of 
the New Testament. In the fifteenth he says, " These 
things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain 
in you, and that your joy might be full." And again, in 
his prayer for them, he says, "And now come I to Thee ; 
and these things I speak in the world that they might 
have my joy fuljilled in themselves." He speaks of his 
joy as a treasure he longed to impart — as something 
which overflowed his own soul, and sought to equalize 
itself by flowing into the souls of his friends. He was 
not only full of joy, but he had fullness of joy to give 
away. 

This joy of Christ in the approach of extremest 
earthly anguish and sorrow is one of the beautiful 
mysteries of our faith. It is a holy night-flower, open- 
ing only in darkness, and shedding in the very shadow 
of death light and perfume ; or like the solemn splendor 
of the stars, to be seen only in the deepest darkness. 

In the representations made of our Lord as a man 
of sorrows we are too apt to forget the solemn em- 
phasis with which he asserts this fullness of joy. But 
let us look at his position on the mere human side. 
At the hour when he thus spoke he knew that, so far 
as the salvation of his nation was concerned, his life- 
work had been a failure. His own people had re- 
jected him and had bargained with a member of his 
own family to betray him. He knew the exact details 
of the scourging, the scoffing, the taunts, the torture, 
the crucifixion ; and to a sensitive soul the hour of 
approach to a great untried agony is often the hour 



258 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

of bitterest trial. It is when we foresee a great trouble 
in the dimness of to-morrow that our undisciplined 
hearts grow faint and fail us. But he who had long 
foreseen — who had counted in advance — every humil- 
iation, every sorrow, and every pain, spoke at the 
same time of his joy as an overflowing fullness. He 
spoke of his peace as something which he had a di- 
vine power to give away. The world saw that night 
a new sight — a sufferer who had touched the extreme 
of all earthly loss and sorrow, who yet stood, like a 
God, offering to give Peace and Joy — even fullness of 
joy. For our Lord intensifies the idea. He wants 
his children not to have joy merely, but to be full of 
joy. This is the meaning of the words to " have my 
joy fulfilled in them." 

We shall see in the affecting history of the next few 
hours of the life of Jesus that this heavenly joy was 
capable of a temporary obscuration. He was aware 
that a trial was coming from a direct collision with 
the Evil Spirit. " The Prince of this world cometh, 
but hath nothing in me." 

Yet we cannot but feel that the mysterious agonies 
of Gethsemane, that wrung the blood-drops from his 
heart, were in part due to that conflict with cruel and 
malignant spirits. It is the greatest possible help to 
our poor sorrowful nature that these struggles, these 
strong cryings and bitter tears of our Lord, have been 
recorded, because it helps us to feel that he was not 
peaceful because he was passionless — that his joy and 
peace did not come from the serenity of a nature 
incapable of sorrow and struggles like ours. There 



THE JOY OF CHRIST. 259 

are passages in the experience of such saints as Madame 
Guyon that seem like the unnatural exaltations of souls 
exceptionally indifferent to circumstances ; nothing 
makes any difference to them ; one thing is just as 
good as another. But in the experience of Jesus we 
see our own most shrinking human repellencies. We 
see that there were sufferings that he dreaded with his 
whole soul; sorrows which he felt to be beyond even 
his power of endurance ; and so when he said, " Not* 
my will, but Thy will," he said it with full vision of 
what he was accepting; and in that unshaken, that 
immovable oneness of will with the Father, lay the 
secret of his joy and victory. 

It is a great and solemn thing for us to think of 
this joy of Christ in. sorrow. It is something that we 
can know only in and by sorrow. But sorrows are so 
many in this world of ours! Grief, sickness, disap- 
pointment, want, death so beset our footsteps that it 
is worth everything to us to think of that joy of Christ 
that is brightest as the hour grows darkest. It is a 
gift. It is not in us. We cannot get it by any human 
reasonings, or the mere exercise of human will, but 
we can get it as a free gift from Jesus Christ. 

If in the hour of his deepest humiliation and suffering 
he had joy and peace to give away, how much more 
now, when he is exalted at the right hand of God to 
give gifts unto men ! Poor sorrowful, suffering, strug- 
gling souls, Christ longs to comfort you. "I will give 
to him that is athirst the water of life freely." "Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest." 




Clj* §Mn .frtntt). 



F human kindness meets return, 
And owns the grateful tie ; 
If tender thoughts within us burn, 
To feel a friend so nigh ; — 

Oh shall not warmer accents tell 

The gratitude we owe 
To Him who died our fears to quell — 

Who bore our guilt and woe ! 

While yet in anguish He surveyed 
Those pangs He would not flee, 

What love His latest words displayed — 
"Meet and remember me!" 

Remember Thee — thy death, thy shame, 

Our sinful hearts to share ! 
O memory ! leave no other name 



But His recorded there. 



-Baptist Noel. 




260 



Thursday in Passion Week. 



XXVI. 



(Sri^smanc. 




HERE are times in life when human beings 
are called to sorrows that seem so hopeless, 
so cruel, that they take from the spirit all 
power of endurance. There are agonies that over- 
whelm, that crush, — their only language seems to be a 
groan of prostrate anguish. There are distresses against 
which the heart cries out, " It is too much. I cannot, 
cannot bear it. God have mercy on me!" 

It was for people who suffer thus, for those who are 
capable of such depths and who are called to go 
through them, that the great Apostle and High Priest 
of our profession passed through that baptism of 
agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Apostle 
says : " It became him for whom are all things, and by 
whom are all things, in bringing many sons and 
daughters unto glory, to make the Captain of their sal- 
vation perfect through suffering. " And it was at this 
hour and time that he was to pass through such depths 
that no child of his could ever go deeper. Alone, and 

261 



262 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

without the possibility of human sympathy, he was to 
test those uttermost distresses possible to the most ex- 
ceptional natures. Jesus suffered all that he could 
endure and live. The record is given with great par- 
ticularity by three evangelists, and is full of mysteri- 
ous suggestion. Up to this period all the discourses 
of our Lord, in distinct view of his final sufferings, had 
been full of calmness and courage. He had consoled 
his little flock, and bid them not be troubled, speaking 
cheerfully of a joy that should repay the brief anguish 
of separation. He not only was wholly at peace in his 
own soul, but felt that he had peace in abundance 
to give away. " Peace I leave with you, my peace I 
give unto you; not as the world giveth give I unto 
you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be 
afraid." 

Yet he went forth from speaking these very words, 
and this is the account of the scene that followed, 
collated from the three evangelists : 

"Then cometh Jesus with them unto the place that is called 
Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, Sit ye here while I go and 
pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and James and John, 
and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy (in extreme 
anguish). And he said unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, 
even unto death ; tarry ye here and watch with me, and pray that ye 
enter not into temptation. And he went forward a little, and fell 
on his face and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass 
from him, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from 
me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh 
unto his disciples and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, 
What ! could ye not watch with me one hour ? Watch and pray 
that ye enter not into temptation ; the spirit indeed is willing, but 
the flesh is weak. He went away again the second time, and 
prayed, and said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee ; 



GETHSEMANE. 263 



take away this cup from me ; nevertheless, not what I will, but what 
thou wilt. O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me 
except I drink it, thy will be done.' And he came and found them 
asleep again ; for their eyes were heavy, neither wist they what to 
answer him. And he left them and went away the third time, and 
prayed, saying the same words. And, being in an agony, he prayed 
more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood, 
falling down to the ground, and there appeared to him an angel from 
heaven strengthening him 

"And when he rose up from prayer, and was come to his disciples, 
he findeth them sleeping for sorrow, and saith unto them, Sleep on 
now — rest." 

There seems here evidence that the anguish, whatever 
it was, had passed, and that Jesus had returned to his 
habitual peace. He looks with pity on the poor tired 
followers whose sympathy had failed him just when 
he most needed it, and says, "Poor souls, let them 
sleep for a little and rest." 

After an interval he rouses them. "It is enough — 
the hour is come; the Son of Man is betrayed into 
the hand of sinners. Rise up ; let us go : behold, he 
is at hand that doth betray me." 

The supposition that it was the final agony of the 
cross which Jesus prayed to be delivered from is in- 
consistent with his whole life and character. He had 
kept that end in view from the beginning of his life. 
He said, in view of it, " I have a baptism to be baptized 
with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" 
He rebuked Peter in the sharpest terms for suggesting 
that he should avoid those predicted sufferings. Going 
up to Jerusalem to die, he walked before the rest, as 
if impelled by a sacred ardor to fulfill his mission. 
Furthermore, in the Epistle to the Hebrews we are 
taught thus : the writer says, speaking of the Saviour, 



264 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

" Who in the days of his flesh offered up prayers with 
strong crying and tears to him that was able to save 
him from death, and was heard in that he feared." 
Whatever relief it was that our Lord supplicated with 
such earnestness it was given ; and he went forth from 
the dreadful anguish in renewed and perfect peace. 

We may not measure the depths of that anguish or 
its causes. Our Lord gives some intimation of one 
feature in it by saying, as he prepared to go forth to 
it, " The Prince of this World cometh, and hath noth- 
ing in me;" and in warning his disciples, "Pray that 
ye enter not into temptation." The expression em- 
ployed by St. Mark to describe the anguish is indicative 
of a sudden rush — of an amazement, as if a new possi- 
bility of suffering, overwhelming and terrible, had been 
disclosed to him, such a sorrow as it seemed must 
destroy life — "exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." 

Let these words remain in all their depths, in all 
their mystery, as standing for that infinite possibility 
of pain which the one divine Man was to taste for 
every man. There have been facts in human experi- 
ence analogous. We are told th-at the night before 
his execution, Jerome of Prague, in his lonely prison, 
condemned and held accursed by the proud Scribes 
and Pharisees, the Christian Sanhedrim of his times, 
fainted and groaned and prayed as Jesus in Getb- 
semane. Martin Luther has left on record a wonderful 
prayer, written the night before the Diet of W^orms, 
when he, a poor, simple monk, was called before the 
great Diet of the Empire to answer for his faith. Such 
strong crying and tears — such throbbing words — that 



GETHSEMANE. 265 

seem literally like drops of blood falling down to the 
ground, attest that Luther was passing through Geth- 
semane, Alone, with all the visible power of the church 
and the world against him, his position was like that of 
Jesus. A crisis was coming when he was to witness 
for truth, and he felt that only God was fcr him — and 
he appeals to him, " Hast thou not chosen me to do 
this work ? I ask Thee, O God, O thou my God, where 
art thou ? Art thou dead ? No, Thou canst not die, 
thou art only hiding Thyself." 

In many private histories there are Gethsemanes. 
There are visitations of sudden, overpowering, ghastly 
troubles; troubles that transcend all ordinary human 
sympathy, such as the helpless human soul has to 
wrestle with alone. And it was because in this blind 
struggle of life such crushing experiences are to be 
meted out to the children of men that Infinite Love 
provided us with a Divine Friend who had been through 
the deepest of them all, and come out victorious. 

In the sudden wrenches which come by the entrance 
of Death into our family circles, there is often an. in- 
explicable depth of misery that words cannot tell. No 
outer words can tell what a trial is to the soul. Only 
Jesus, who, as the Head of the human race, united 
in himself every capability of human suffering, and 
proved them all, in order that he might help us, only 
He has an arm strong enough, and a voice tender 
enough to reach us. The stupor of the disciples in the 
agony of Jesus is a sort of parable or symbol of the 
inevitable loneliness of the deepest kind of sorrow. 
There are friends, loving, honest, true, but they can- 



266 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

not watch with us through such hours. It is like the 
hour of death — nobody can go with us. But he who, 
knows what it is so to suffer ; he who has felt the 
horror, the amazement, the heart-sick dread; who has 
fallen on his face overcome, and prayed with cryings 
and tears, and the bloody sweat of agony, He can 
understand us, and can help us. He can send an 
angel from heaven to comfort us when every human 
comforter is "sleeping for sorrow." It was Gethsem- 
ane which gave Jesus the power to bring many sons 
and daughters unto glory. 

And it may comfort us under such trials to hope 
that as he thus gained an experience and a tenderness 
which made him mighty to comfort and to save, so 
we, in our humbler measure, may become comforters 
to others. When the experience is long past, when 
the wounds of the heart are healed, then we may find 
it good to have drank of Christ's cup, and gone down 
in that baptism with him. We may find ourselves with 
hearts tenderer to feel, and stronger to sustain others; 
even as the apostle says, he " comforteth us in all 
our tribulations, that Ave may be sble to comfort them 
that are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we 
ourselves are comforted of God." 




21 as 



rajmr of % %MkUto. 




HOU only refuge from the heat ; 
Thou only rock wherein to hide ; 
Thou only shade when tempests beat ; 
The suffering and the crucified ; 
Captain of our salvation, that could be 
Made perfect only in thine agony ! 

My sins are great, my pain is sore, 

My strength is gone, my spirit fails. 
For me the cross thy great love bore ; 

For me the spear, for me the nails, 
For me the crown around thy temples set, 
For me the agony and bloody sweat. 

Oh, while I tread these rough, hard ways — 
Ways smooth to thy ways — lead mine eyes 

"With holy yet with steadfast gaze 
Into thy passion's sanctuary. 

Thy wounds my cure, my more than trust art Thou ; 

Hadst Thou not borne them, where had I been now? 

Hear me and save me when I call 

By all those woes now passed away — 
Thy precious death and burial, 

Thy resurrection the third day, 

267 



268 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



Thy triumph over Death and all his host, 
And by the coming of the Holy Ghost. 

Lord, if Thou wilt, thou canst relieve ; 

Speak the word only; set me free 
From sin, that so my soul may live 

From suffering, if it pleaseth Thee, 
And make Thou here whate'er Thou wilt my part, 
If there I may but see thee as Thou art. 

— John Neale. * 




fjrarittfl \\t Cross. 



u They laid hold upon one Simon a Cyrenian, and on him they laid the cross, 
that he might bear it after Jesus." 



| LONG the dusty thoroughfare of life, 
Upon his daily errands walking free, 
Came a brave, honest man, untouched by pain, 
Unchilled by sight or thought of misery. 




But lo ! a crowd : — he stops, — with curious eye 
A fainting form all pressed to earth he sees ; 

The hard, rough burden of the bitter cross 

Hath bowed the drooping head and feeble knees. 

Ho ! lay the cross upon yon stranger there, 

For he hath breadth of chest and strength of limb. 

Straight it is done ; and, heavy laden thus 
With Jesus' cross, he turns and follows Him, 



Unmurmuring, patient, cheerful, pitiful, 
Prompt with the holy Sufferer to endure, 

Forsaking all to follow the dear Lord, — 
Thus did he make his glorious calling sure. 

O soul, whoe'er thou art, walking life's way, 
As yet from touch of deadly sorrow free, 

Learn from this story to forecast the day 

When Jesus and His cross shall come to thee. 

269 



270 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

O, in that fearful, that decisive hour. 

Rebel not, shrink not, seek not thence to flee, 

But, humbly bending, take thy heavy load, 
And bear it after Jesus patiently. 

His cross is thine. If thou and He be one, 
Some portion of His pain must still be thine ; 

Thus only mayst thou share His glorious crown, 
And reign with Him in majesty divine. 

Master in sorrow ! I accept my share 
In the great anguish of life's mystery. 

No more, alone, I sink beneath my load, 
But bear my cross, O Jesus, after thee. 





Good Friday. 



XXVII. 



C{|* fast Horfe d $tm> 



PECULIAR sacredness always attaches to the 
words of the dying. In that lonely pass be- 
» tween the here and the hereafter the meanest 
soul becomes in a manner a seer, and a mysterious 
interest invests it. But the last utterances of great and 
noble spirits, of minds of vast feeling and depth, are 
of still deeper significance. The last utterances of 
great men would form a pathetic collection and a food 
for deep ponderings. It is no wonder, then, that the 
traditions of the Christian church have attached a spe- 
cial value to the last words of Jesus on the cross. 

The last words of Socrates, reported by Plato, have 
had an undying interest. These words were spoken 
in the bosom of sympathizing friends and in the enjoy- 
ment of physical quiet and composure. Death was at 
hand ; but it was a death painless and easy, and undis- 
turbing to the flow of thought or emotion. 

The death of Jesus, on the contrary, was death with 

271 



272 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

every aggravation and horror which could make it fear- 
ful. There was everything to torture the senses and 
to obscure the soul. It was a whirl of vulgar obloquy 
and abuse, confusing to the spirit, and following upon 
protracted exhaustion from sleeplessness and suffering 
of various kinds for long hours. 

In the case of most human beings we might wish 
to hide our eyes from the sight of such an agony ; we 
might refuse to listen to what must be the falterings and 
the weaknesses of a noble spirit overwhelmed and borne 
down beyond the power of human endurance. But no 
such danger attends the listening to the last words on 
Calvary. They have been collected into a rosary em- 
bodying the highest Christian experience possible to 
humanity, the most signal victory of love over pain and 
of good over evil that the world's history presents. 

During Passion-Week in Rome no services are more 
impressive than those of the seven "last words," with the 
hymns, prayers and exhortations accompanying them. 
To us the mere quotation of them, unattended by ser- 
mon, or hymn, or prayer, is a litany of awful power. 
Have we ever pondered these as they were spoken in 
their order in the words of the simple gospel narrative ? 

"And when they came to the place that is called 
Calvary, there they crucified him and the malefactors, 
the one on his right hand and the other on his left. 
Then said Jesus: Father, forgive them, they know not 
what they do." This is the first word. Against 
physical violence and pain there is in us all a reaction 
of the animal nature which expresses itself often in 
the form of irritation. Thus, in strong, undisciplined 



THE LAST WORDS OF JESUS. 273 

natures, the first shock of physical torture brings out 
a curse, and it is only after an interval that reason and 
conscience gain the ascendancy and make the needed 
allowance. In these strange words of Jesus we feel 
that there is the sharp shock of a new sense of pain, 
but it wrings from him only prayer. This divine 
sweetness of love was unvanquished, the habit of ten- 
derness and consideration for the faults of others 
furnished an instant plea. The poor brutal Roman 
soldiers — they know not what they do! The foolish 
multitude who three days before shouted " Hosanna," 
and now shout " Crucify " — they know not what they 
do ! How strange to the Roman soldiers must those 
words have sounded, if they understood them. " What 
manner of man is this?" It is not surprising that 
tradition numbers these poor soldiers among the earliest 
converts to Jesus. 

The second utterance was on this wise: 
" And the people that stood beholding, and the rulers 
also with them, derided him, saying, He saved others; 
let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God. 
And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him and 
offering him vinegar ; and one of the malefactors railed 
on him, saying, If thou be the Son of God, save thyself 
and us. But the other answering, rebuked him, saying, 
Dost thou not fear God, seeing that thou art in the 
same condemnation ? — and we, indeed, justly, for we 
receive the reward of our deeds ; but this man hath 
done nothing amiss. And he said to Jesus, Lord, re- 
member me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And 
Jesus said unto him, Verily, I say unto thee, to-day thou 



274 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



shalt be with me in Paradise." Still, un vanquished by 
pain, He is even with His last breath pronouncing 
words of grace and consolation for the guilty and re- 
pentant! He is mighty to save even in His humilia- 
tion ! 

The third utterance is recorded by St. John as follows : 
" Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and 
his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary 
Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother 
standing and the disciple whom he loved, he said to his 
mother, Woman, behold thy son, and to the disciple, 
Son, behold thy mother" 

Thus far, every utterance of Jesus has been one of 
thoughtful consideration for others, of prayer for his 
enemies, of grace and pardon to the poor wretch by 
his side, and of tenderness to his mother and disciple. 
But in tasting death for every man our Lord was to 
pass through a deeper experience ; he was to know the 
sufferings of the darkened brain, which, clogged and 
impeded by the obstructed circulation, no longer 
afforded a clear medium for divine communion. He 
was to suffer the eclipse which the animal nature in its 
dying state can interpose between the soul and God. 
Three hours we are told had passed, when there was 
darkness over all the land, like that that was slowly 
gathering over the head of the suffering Lord. " And 
at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 
Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani, which is, being interpreted, 
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
Those words, from the Psalm of David, come now as 
the familiar language expressive of that dreadful ex- 



THE LAST WORDS OF JESUS. 275 



perience to which the whole world looks as its ran- 
som. 

"After that, Jesus said, / thirst. And one ran and 
filled a sponge full of vinegar and put it on a reed 
and gave him to drink. And when he had received the 
vinegar, he said, '// is finished] and he bowed his 
head." 

What we read of his last utterance is that "he cried 
with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost." This last 
loud utterance was in the words, "Father, into thy hands 
I co7?imend my spirit." 

It is the interpretation that the church has given to 
these last words that they betokened a sudden flame of 
joyful perception, such as sometimes lights up the 
brain at the dying moment, after it has been dark- 
ened by the paralysis of death. As he said, " It is 
finished," light, and joy, and hope, flushed his soul, 
and with this loud cry of victory and joy, it departed 
like a ray of heavenly light to the bosom of the Father. 

Such were the seven " last utterances " of Jesus — and 
when can we hope to attain to what they teach ? 
When shall we be so grounded in Love that no tu- 
mult or jar of outward forces, no insults, no physical 
weariness, exhaustion, or shock of physical pain, shall 
have power to absorb us in selfishness, or make us 
forgetful of others? When shall pity and prayer be 
the only spontaneous movement of our hearts when 
most hurt and injured — pierced in the tenderest nerve? 
When shall thoughtfulness for others, and divine pity 
for degraded natures, be the immovable habit of our 
souls ? How little of self and its sufferings in these 



276 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 



last words; how much of pity and love — the pity and 
love of a God ! 

Could we but learn life's lessons by them, then will 
come at last to us the final hour, when, our trial be- 
ing completed, we shall say " It is finished," and pass 
like him to the bosom of the Father. 




C|e Cross of Cfrrist. 




SACRED Head, now wounded, 

With grief and shame weigh'd down 
Now scornfully surrounded 
With thorns, thy only crown ; 
O sacred Head, what glory, 

What bliss till now was thine ! 
Yet, though despised and gory, 
I joy to call Thee mine. 



O noblest brow and dearest, 

In other days the world 
All fear'd when Thou appearedst : 

What shame on Thee is hurl'd ! 
How art Thou pale with anguish, 

With sore abuse and scorn ; 
How doth that visage languish, 

Which once was bright as morn ! 



What language shall I borrow, 

To thank Thee, dearest Friend, 
For this thy dying sorrow, 

Thy pity without end ! 
O make me thine forever, 

And, should I fainting be, 
Lord, let me never, never, 

Outlive my love to Thee. 
277 



278 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

If I, a wretch, should leave Thee- 

O Jesus, leave not me ; 
In faith may I receive Thee, 

When death shall set me free. 
When strength and comfort languish, 

And I must hence depart, 
Release me then from anguish, 

By thine own wounded heart. 



Be near when I am dying, 

O, show thy Cross to me ! 
And, for my succor flying, 

Come, Lord, to set me free. 
These eyes new faith receiving 

From Jesus shall not move ; 
For he who dies believing 

Dies safely — through thy Love. 

— Paul Gerhardt. 




Good Friday Evening. 



XXVIII. 



C|e $arlteat four. 




HAT is the darkest hour to us when our friends 
die ? Not the dying hour ; for then love has 
MJ some last act, some last word to receive, some 
comfort to give, some service to render, that diverts 
from the bitterness of pain. Not even when the eyes 
are closed forever, and the face is fixed in marble 
stillness; for still we gather at the side of the cold 
clay and feel as if there were something left us of 
our. love. But when we have carried our dear ones 
to the grave, and seen the doors of the sepulcher shut 
between them and us, and come back to the house 
where they are no more — where they never more may 
be — then is indeed the darkest hour. 

There is a very touching picture by Delaroche en- 
titled, "The Return from the Cross," in which the 
mother of Jesus, leaning on the arm of the beloved 
John, is seen just entering a lowly dwelling. A few 
faithful friends, men and women, are with them; they 
have seen Him die — seen him laid in the sepulcher 

279 



280 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

and a great stone rolled against the door; and now 
they are come to their desolate home to think it all 
over, and to weep. 

Do we ask, Why did they not remember the words 
of Jesus, that he should rise again ? Ah ! because 
they had just such hearts as we have, and their faith 
was overpowered by sight just as ours is. 

They may have thought they believed that they 
should see their Lord risen from the dead ; but at 
the sight, of the death agonies, and the* lifeless form, 
and the dark, cold stone of the sepulcher, all this 
poor faith died in darkness. It was like carrying a 
taper out into a tempest. And we, when we lay our 
dear ones in the grave, say in solemn words that we 
do it " in sure and certain hope of a blessed and glorious 
resurrection," when what is sown in weakness shall be 
raised in power, what is sown in dishonor shall be raised 
in glory. We say it, and we think we believe it; but 
does it really then cheer us ? Does it dry our tears ? 
Does it make the return to our desolated home any 
less dreadful ? 

Still we remember the death-bed, the pains, the dying 
eyes, the weakness, the sinking — we are overwhelmed 
by sorrow, and our souls ache as with a wound. Our 
hearts throb and yearn towards the form we can no 
longer see or embrace, as if the loved one were a portion 
of our own selves that had been violently torn away, 
leaving us fainting and bleeding to death. All this — 
more than all this — was in the sorrow of the home of 
Mary and John that darkest of all nights. 

He they mourned was not merely friend, but Lord 



THE DARKEST HOUR. 28 T 

and Leader, the Hope of Israel ; the hope of the world ; 
and God had let him suffer and die thus ! 

It was true that Jesus had made special efforts to 
provide against the sinking of this hour. He warned 
his friends of it beforehand. He admitted four of his 
chosen disciples upon the Mount of Transfiguration to 
look into the heavenly world and see him in glory and 
hear him speaking with Moses and Elijah of his coming 
death. All this was given that their faith might not 
fail. Then, just before his death, at the grave of 
Lazarus, he declared himself the Resurrection and the 
Life, and showed them in the restored form of a well- 
known friend what he meant by rising from the dead — 
for it is said, " They questioned among themselves 
what the rising from the dead should mean." 

But all appeared to be gone now. Love still kept 
watch. Spices were prepared to embalm the precious 
form with no hope, apparently, of its resurrection. It 
had faded out from their minds as it seems to fade 
out of the minds of us Christians when we bewail 
our dead and speak of them as "lost." Their Jesus 
was to them dead and gone; and why this thin.g was 
permitted was a dark, insoluble mystery. " We trusted 
that it had been he that should have redeemed Israel," 
said the two disciples, sadly walking on the way to 
Emmaus. "We trusted!" All in the past tense. Not 
a word of any hope or faith in the resurrection! And 
yet their Lord and Master was even at that moment 
walking with them and comforting their hearts. 

Surely, in this respect, we modern Christians too 
often tread in the footsteps of the saints and suffer as 



282 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

they did. But our Lord knows our weakness ; he 
knows the physical faintness which comes from long 
watching, the obscuration of mind which comes from 
sorrow, and he is at hand to comfort us in our blind 
weeping. Mary Magdalene knew him not, because her 
eyes were full of tears, till his well-known voice called 
her name. The mourning disciples as they walked to 
Emmaus knew not that Jesus was walking by them. 
And so, ever since, to weary hearts and lonely homes 
the comforting Christ still comes invisibly, with sweet- 
ness and rest, if only we of little faith would remember 
his promises and recognize his presence. Still now, 
as he first announced himself, he comes " to heal the 
broken-hearted," and is beside them ever in the dark- 
est and most dreadful hour of their afflictions. 




Cjp Inkuohm Jrunfr. 




T happened on a solemn eventide, 
Soon after Him that was our Surety died, 
Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined- 
The scene of all these sorrows left behind — 
Sought their own village, busied as they went 
In musings worthy of the great event. 
They spake of Him they loved ; of Him whose life, 
Tho' blameless, had incurred perpetual strife. 
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, 
A deep memorial graven on their hearts. 
They thought of Him : they justly thought Him one 
Sent to do more than He appeared to have done — 
To exalt their people and to place them high 
Above all else — they wondered He should die. 
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end, 
A stranger joined them, courteous, as a friend, 
And asked them, with a kind, engaging air, 
What their affliction was, and begged a share. 
Informed, he gathered up the broken thread, 
And, truth and wisdom gracing all he said, 
Explained, illustrated and searched so well 
The tender theme on which they chose to dwell, 
That, reaching home, *' The night," they said, " is near ; 
"We must not now be parted, — tarry here." 
283 



284 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

The new acquaintance soon became a guest, 
And, made so welcome at their simple feast, 
He blessed the bread, but vanished at the word, 
And left them both exclaiming, " 'Twas the Lord ! 
Did not our hearts feel all he deigned to say? 
Did they not burn within us by the way?" 

— William Cowper. 




msttx. 




"Cjjrist, being raised from % beab, hiet^r no mart; bzufy 
Ijailj no more bominion ober jjim. Jor in %t jje bieb, 
Ije bieb mtto sin once : but in ijjat be libetlj, Ije lifailj unto 
<$ob. Sikefoise retkon ge also gouraelb** to be beab iubeeb 
unto sin, but alibe unto $ob, tbrougfj fesus Christ our 
forb." 



"Whereby the Dayspring from on high hath visited us, 
to give light unto them that sit in darkness." 



Easter Sunday. 



XXIX. 




HERE is something wonderfully poetic in the 
simple history given by the different evan- 
gelists of the resurrection of our Lord. It is 
like a calm, serene, dewy morning, after a night of thun- 
der and tempest. One of the most beautiful features 
in the narrative is the presence of those god-like forms 
of our angel brethren, How can it be possible that 
critics with human hearts have torn and mangled this 
sacred picture for the purpose of effacing these celestial 
forms — so beautiful, so glorious ! Is it superstition to 
believe that there are higher forms of life, intellect and 
energy than those of earth; that there are races of 
superior beings between us and the throne of God, as 
there are gradations below us of less and lessening 
power down to the half-vegetable zoophytes? These 
angels, with their power, their purity, their unfading 
youth, their tender sympathy for man, are a radiant 
celestial possibility which every heart must long to 
claim as not only probable but certain. 

28; 



286 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

The history of our Lord from first to last is fragrant 
with the sympathy and musical with the presence of 
these shining ones. They announced his coming to the 
Blessed among Women. They filled the air with songs 
and rejoicings at the hour of his birth. They minis- 
tered to him during his temptations in the wilderness. 
When repentant sinners thronged about him and Scribes 
and Pharisees sneered, it was to the sympathy of these 
invisible ones that he turned, as those whose hearts 
thrilled with joy over the repenting sinner. In the last 
mysterious agony at Gethsemane it was an angel that 
appeared and strengthened him. And now with what 
god-like energy do they hasten upon their mission to 
attend their king's awaking! 

" And, behold, there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the 
Lord descended from heaven, and rolled back the stone from the 
door of the sepulcher, and sat upon it. His countenance was like 
lightning, and his raiment was white as snow, and for fear of him 
the keepers did shake and became as dead men." 

In another evangelist we have a scene that preceded 
this. These devoted women, in whose hearts love out- 
lived both faith and hope, rose while it was yet dark, 
and set out with their spices and perfumes to go and 
pay their last tribute of affection and reverence to the 
dead. 

They were under fear of persecution and death ; they 
knew the grave was sealed and watched by those who 
had slain their Lord, but still they determined to go. 
There was the inconsiderate hardihood of love in their 
undertaking, and the artless helplessness of their inquir)', 
"Who will roll away the stone from the door?" shows 
the desperation of their enterprise. Yet they could 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 287 

not bat believe that by prayers or tears or offered 
payment — in some way — that stone should be rolled 
away. 

Arrived on the spot, they saw that the sepulcher 
was open and empty, and Mary Magdalene, with the 
impulsive haste and earnestness which marks her char- 
acter, ran back to the house of John, where were the 
mother of Jesus, and Peter, and astonished them with 
the tidings. " They have taken away the Lord out of 
the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid 
him." 

Nothing is said of the Mother in this scene. Prob- 
ably she was utterly worn out and exhausted by the 
dreadful scenes of the day before, and incapable of 
further exertion. But Peter and John started immedi- 
ately for the sepulcher. Meanwhile, the two other 
women went into the sepulcher and stood there per- 
plexed, till suddenly they saw a vision of celestial forms, 
radiant in immortal youth and clothed in white. One said : 

" Be not afraid. I know ye seek Jesus of Nazareth that was cru- 
cified. Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is not here. 
He is risen as he said. Behold where they laid him. Remember 
how he spake unto you of this when he was in Galilee, saying, The 
Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be 
crucified, and the third day rise again." 

And they remembered his words. 

Furthermore, the friendly spirit bids them to go and 
tell the disciples and Peter that their Master is risen 
from the dead, and is going before them into Galilee 
— there shall they see him. And charged with this 
message the women had fled from the sepulcher just 
as Peter and John came up. 



288 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

The delicacies of character are strikingly shown in 
the brief record. John outruns Peter, stoops down 
and looks into the sepulcher; but that species of reti- 
cence which always appears in him controls him here 
— he hesitates to enter the sacred place. Now, how- 
ever, comes Peter, impetuous, ardent, determined, and 
passes right into the tomb. 

There is a touch of homelike minuteness in the de- 
scription of the grave as they found it ; — no discovery 
of haste, no sign of confusion, but all in order : the 
linen grave-clothes lying in one place ; the napkin 
that was about his head not lying with them, but 
folded together in a place by itself; indicating the 
perfect calmness and composure with which their Lord 
had risen — transported with no rapture or surprise, 
but, in this supreme moment, maintaining the same 
tranquillity which had ever characterized him. 

It is said they saw and believed, though as yet they 
did not fully understand the saying that he must rise 
from the dead ; and they left the place and ran with 
the news to the disciples. 

But Mary still lingers weeping by the empty tomb — 
type of too many of us, who forget that our beloved 
ones have arisen. Through her tears she sees the pity- 
ing angels, who ask her as they might often ask us, 
" Why weepest thou?" She tells her sorrowful story — 
they have taken away her Lord and she knows not 
where they have laid him ; — and yet at this moment 
Jesus is standing by her, and one word from his voice 
changes all. 

It is not general truth or general belief that our 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 289 

souls need in their anguish ; it is one word from Christ 
to us, it is His voice calling us by name, that makes 
the darkness light. 

We mark throughout this story the sympathetic 
touches of interest in the angels. They had heard 
and remembered what Christ said in Galilee, though 
his people had forgotten it. They had had sympathy 
for the repentant weeping of Peter, and sent a special 
message of comfort to him. These elder brethren of 
the household seem in all things most thoughtful and 
careful of human feelings; they breathe around us the 
spirit of that world where an unloving word or harsh 
judgment is an impossible conception. 

The earlier Christian tradition speaks of our Lord's 
first visit to his mother. It may be that in that space 
of time while Peter and John were running to the 
sepulcher Jesus himself chose to draw near to his 
mother. To her he gave one of his last dying words, 
and we cannot but believe that one of his earliest risen 
messages of hope and blessing was for her. But over 
an interview so peculiar and so blessed the sacred nar- 
rative has deemed it wise to leave the veil of silence. 

The time after our Lord's resurrection is one full of 
mysteries. But few things are told us of that life 
which he lived on earth. He no longer walked the 
ways of men as before — no longer lived with his dis- 
ciples, but only appeared to them from time to time, 
as he saw that they needed comfort, counsel or rebuke. 
We have the beautiful story of* the walk to Emmaus. 
We have accounts of meetings of the disciples with 
closed doors, for fear of the Jews, when Jesus suddenly 



290 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

appeared in the midst of them, saying, " Peace be unto 
you!" and showing to them his hands and his side; 
and it is added, " Then were the disciples glad when 
they saw the Lord." 

We have an account of how he suddenly appeared to 
them by the Lake of Genesareth, when they had been 
vainly toiling all night — how he stood on the shore in 
the dim grey of morning and said, " Children, have ye 
any meat?" They answered him "No;" and he said, 
" Cast the net on the right hand and ye shall find." 
And then John whispers to Peter, " It is the Lord!" and 
Peter, impetuous to the last, casts himself into the water 
and swims to the shore. They find a fire prepared, a 
meal ready for them, and Jesus to bless the bread, — 
and very sweet and lovely was the interview. 

How many such visits and interviews there were — 
when and with whom — we have no means of knowing, 
though St. John indicates that there were many other 
things which Jesus said and did worthy of record 
besides those of which we are told. We learn from 
St. Paul that he appeared to more than five hundred 
of his followers at once — a meeting not described by 
any of the evangelists. 

It is believed by many Christians that Christ is yet 
coming to reign visibly upon this earth. That Christ 
should reign in any one spot or city of this earth, as 
earthly kings reign, with a court and human forms of 
administration, is suggestive of grave difficulties. The 
embarrassments in the^vay of our Centennial Exhibition 
this year, the fatigue and disturbance and danger to 
health and life of such crowds coming and going, might 



THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. 291 

suggest what would be the effect on human society if in 
any one earthly place the universal object of all human 
desire were located. But it may be possible that the bar- 
rier between the spiritual world and ours will be so far 
removed that the presence of our Lord and his saints 
may at times be with us, even as Christ was with the 
disciples in this interval. It may become a lawful sub- 
ject of desire and prayer and expectation. It may be 
in that day that in assemblies of his people Jesus will 
suddenly stand, saying, "Peace be unto you!" Such 
appearances could take place in all countries and lands, 
according to human needs, without deranging human 
society. 

But whether visibly or by the manifestation of his 
Spirit, let us hasten and look forward to that final 
second coming of our Master, when the kingdoms of 
this world shall be the kingdoms of our Lord and his 
Christ. 




€\t $irst lag rt \\t Mttl 



OW calm and beautiful the morn 
That gilds the sacred tomb 
Where once the Crucified was borne 
And vailed in midnight gloom ! 
Oh ! weep no more the Saviour slain ; 
The Lord is risen — He lives again. 



Ye mourning saints ! dry every tear 

For your departed Lord ; 
" Behold the place — He is not here ;" 

The tomb is all unbarred. 
The gates of death were closed in vain : 
The Lord is risen — He lives again. 

How tranquil now the rising day ! 

'Tis Jesus still appears, 
A risen Lord, to chase away 

Your unbelieving fears. 
Oh ! weep no more your comforts slain, 
The Lord is risen — He lives again. 

And when the shades of evening fall, 

When life's last hour draws nigh, 
If Jesus shine upon the soul, 
How blissful then to die ! 
Since He has risen who once was slain, 
Ye die in Christ to live again. 

— Thomas Hasting: 
292 




SOtlSXflH 




"#rant, buz beseech tljee, gJhnio^tg $ob, fynt like as tot 
bo belieoe tljg onlg-oeootten J§on our JTorb §esws Christ to 
Ijaoe astenbeb into i\z Ijeaoens ; so foe mag alga in jjeart 
anb minb tljitjjer asunb, anb foitjj Ijim toniinuallg biuell, 
foljo lioeilj anb reignetjj foiHj ^Jjee anb thz ||olg <!${josi, 
anz (Hob, foorlb foiiljout enb. §,men." 



"Stephen, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up 
steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of god, and 
Jesus standing on the rtght hand of God." 



Ascension Day. 




XXX. 

T length the visible and mortal pilgrimage of 
our Lord was over, and the time come when 
* he must return to his home in heaven, to the 
glory with the Father which he had before the world 
was. 

We cannot fail to notice the calmness, brevity and 
simplicity with which this crowning act of his life is 
recorded. He had before told his disciples that it was 
better for them that his visible presence should be with- 
drawn from them, and that when ascended to the Father 
he should be with them as an intimate spiritual presence 
and power. He new speaks to them of a baptism of 
the Holy Spirit that they should receive after his as- 
cension, and bids them tarry in Jerusalem till they 
be endued with this power from on high. 

Then the narrative says : " And he led them out as 
far as Bethany ; and he lifted up his hands and blessed 
them, and while he blessed them he was parted from 
them and taken up into heaven ; and a cloud received 

293 



294 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

him out of their sight. And while they were looking 
steadfastly to heaven, as he went up, behold two men 
stood by them in white apparel, who said, Ye men of 
Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into Heaven ? This 
same Jesus which is taken from you into Heaven 
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go. 
And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem 
with great joy from the Mount of Olives, and were 
continually in the temple praising and blessing God." 

The forty days that Jesus lingered on earth had, it 
seems, not been in vain. His mourning flock were 
consoled and brought to such a point of implicit faith 
that the final separation was full of joy. 

They were at last convinced that it was better for 
them that he go to the Father — that an ascended 
•Lord, seated at the right hand of power and shedding 
down spiritual light and joy, was better than any 
earthly presence, however dear. Christ, as a living 
power of inspiration in the soul, was henceforth to be 
nearer, dearer, more inseparable, more consoling and 
helpful than the man of Nazareth had ever been. 

Let us all with one heart unite in the beautiful 
prayer of the church for this day : " O God, the King 
of Glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ 
with great triumph unto thy Kingdom in Heaven, we 
beseech thee leave us not comfortless ; but send to us 
thy Holy Ghost to comfort and exalt us to that same 
place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before us, 
who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy 
Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen." 






%\t %zun\m. 



HY is thy face so lit with smiles, 

Mother of Jesus? Why? 
And wherefore is thy beaming look 



So fixed upon the sky? 

His rising form on Olivet 

A summer's shadow cast ; 
The branches of the hoary trees 

Bowed as the Shadow past ! 

And so He rose, with all his train 

Of righteous souls around ; 
His blessing fell into their hearts 

Like dew upon the ground. 

Down stooped a silver cloud from heaven — 

The Eternal Spirit's car — 
And 0:1 the lessening vision went, 

Like some receding star. 

The silver cloud hath sailed away ; 

The skies are blue and free ; 
The road that vision took is now 

Sunshine and vacancy. 

But in our hearts thy peace remains — - 

That gift so sweet, so free — 
Nor time, nor life, nor death shall part 

Our souls, dear Lord, from Thee. 

— F. W. Faber. 
295 



Whitsuntide. 



XXXI. 



Cje J)ub Spit 




HEN our Saviour was to go forth on his great 
mission he spent forty days in prayer ; and so 
now his little church were to spend forty days 
of waiting and devotion till they should receive the 
gift from on high. What that gift was we can see in 
their history. How dark, how confused, hew unspiritual 
their views, how low their faith, how easily upset by 
the storms of persecution ! But when the divine influ- 
ence came upon them, what a change ! What clearness, 
what insight, what courage, what power ! When brought 
before kings and rulers they bore joyous testimony; 
when beaten ignominiously they went out rejoicing that 
they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his sake. 
Do not all ministers of Christ, all Christians to whose 
keeping his honor and cause is confided, need such a 
baptism as this, such a new birth in spiritual things? 
For the gift came not merely on the twelve apostles, 
but on the whole company of believers, both men and 

2C/) 



THE HOLY SPIRIT. 297 

women. We read the names of the Twelve, and then 
are told that " these all continued with one accord in 
prayer and supplication with the women, and Mary 
the mother of Jesus, and his brethren," — a company 
of a hundred and twenty persons. 

They were united day after day in prayer — their 
whole souls, with one accord, were lifted heavenward; 
all earthly scenes and interests were put aside, and the 
attitude of their minds was one of ardent desire and 
expectancy. 

It was to souls so raised, so enkindled, that at last 
the glorious gift came — the spiritual power that made 
every Christian man and woman among them an in- 
spired and convincing witness for Christ. The world 
witnessed that day a new sight — an invisible spiritual 
power, before which thousands bowed at the name of 
that Jesus whom but a few weeks before they had seen 
crucified. And why have we not such a baptism and 
such a power? Is our faith what it should be, — our 
zeal, our devotion ? If all Christians were like us, 
would the world ever be converted to God ? Is there 
a gift of spiritual power and constancy of faith to be 
had in answer to fervent prayer? and should we not 
seek it as they did ? Of late there have been in Europe 
and in this country large conventions of Christians of 
all names and denominations to pray and seek for this 
gift of the Holy Spirit, to enable them to witness for 
Christ as these witnessed; it is a most joyful sign 
of our times. Let us hope that such prayers may be 
answered in bringing back to the modern church some- 
thing of the fervor, the simplicity, the entire devotion 



298 



FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER, 



that characterized these first Christians. It is not by 
arguing with skeptics, but by a divine and holy life, 
that Christians are to convince the world of the truth 
of our religion. It is "Christ in us, the hope of 
glory," that is to be the power that shall convert the 
world. 




§mmt of t|e Spirit 




O track is on the sunny sky, 
No footprints on the air : 
Jesus hath gone ; the face of earth 
I3 desolate and bare. 

That Upper Room is heaven on earth ; 

Within its precincts lie 
All that earth has of faith, or hope, 

Or heaven-born charity. 

One moment — and the silentness 
. Was breathless as the grave ; 
The fluttered earth forgot to quake, 
The troubled trees to wave. 

He comes ! He comes ! that mighty Breath 

From heaven's eternal shores ; 
His uncreated freshness fills 

His Bride, as she adores. 

Earth quakes before that rushing blast, 

Heaven echoes back the sound, 
And mightily the tempest wheels 

That Upper Room around. 

One moment — and the Spirit hung 

O'er all with dread desire ; 
Then broke upon the heads of all 

In cloven tongues of fire. 
299 



F. W. Faber. 



XXXII. 



fl/jjrist'a jfcecirob fife, in j$ia Jfolloteo. 




N a moment of profound emotion, when our 
Lord contemplated the near approach of the 
last tragedy in his life, he said : " Except a 
corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth 
alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit." 

Accordingly, it was but little more than a month 
after the scenes of Calvary before Jerusalem was filled 
with a harvest of men and women who were born into 
the Christ-life, and were living and acting in his spirit. 

At the feast of Pentecost Jerusalem was full of 
strangers, devout Jews from every nation under heaven, 
and three thousand in one day bowed at the feet of 
the Jesus whom they had crucified. The chief priests 
were enraged and terrified, for everywhere the apostles 
of this crucified Jesus, inspired with a supernatural 
courage, were working miracles and preaching with an 
energy even more overcoming than that of the Master. 
Jesus had been among them but as one man; he had 
come back as twelve men, every one of whom was full 

300 



CHRIST'S SECOND LIFE. 301 

of him, working his works and preaching him with over- 
whelming power. 

It is most impressive to read in the Book of Acts 
how Peter and John were called before Annas and 
Caiaphas — the very tribunal before which Jesus so 
lately stood, the tribunal before which Peter denied 
him and John stood in trembling silence. Now these 
same men face high-priests and elders with heads 
erect and flashing eyes, and say: 

" If we be this day examined of the good deed done to the impo- 
tent man, be it known unto you that by die name of Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth, whom you crucified and whom God raised from the dead, 
doth this man stand before you whole. This is the stone which was 
set at naught of you builders, which has become the head of the 
corner : neither is there salvation in any other." 

We can imagine the dismay of the Sanhedrim when 
such men and such sermons met them at every corner. 
The record says that, perceiving the boldness of Peter 
and John, and knowing that they were unlearned men, 
they marveled, and took knowledge of them that they 
had been with Jesus ! 

It is not likely that the high-priest had forgotten 
the recent time when Jesus stood bound before him. 
Evidently even then his manner had inspired a secret 
misgiving awe ; and here were these disciples now 
looking and speaking just like him, with the same 
certainty, the. same majesty. It was Jesus of Nazareth 
returning in his followers. It was a terror to them all. 
But we are told the word of God grew and prevailed, 
the converts increased in crowds daily, " a great com- 
pany of the priests were obedient " to the word. Of 
course persecution raged. To confess Christ was to 



302 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

lose place, patronage, and daily bread. The Christians, 
in their new joy, met this by throwing all their worldly 
possessions into a common stock and apportioning 
support to each. 

There were rich men like Nicodemus, Joseph of 
Arimathea, and many others, and we read of men who 
sold all they had and laid the money at the apostles' 
feet. Thus those who daily were thrown out of em- 
ployment for Christ's sake were supported and relieved. 
A great financial and administrative business grew up 
out of this state of things, and we are told that there 
arose a murmuring among the foreign-born Jews that 
their widows were neglected in the apportionment of 
aid. 

The Jews have been in all ages a trading nation. 
Palestine was a little country situated in the very heart 
of the ancient civilized world. It was a center of 
emigration. Colonies of Jews, bearing their religion, 
their synagogue, their national zeal, had foothold and 
maintained Jewish worship in almost every leading city 
of Greece and Rome. They were called, according to 
their country, Greeks or Romans, while as to religion 
and race they were Jews. 

It appears that the proportion of Greek-born Jews 
among the converts was so great as to warrant the 
appointment of seven deacons, all of whom bear names 
which show their Grecian origin. Stephen was evi- 
dently a noted man among them. He is described as 
full of faith and the Holy Ghost. For aught we know, 
Stephen may have been one of those Greeks who, 
during the last week of Christ's life in Jerusalem, came 



CHRIST'S SECOND LIFE. 303 

to his disciples, saying, " Sir, we would see Jesus." He 
may have been among the first-fruits of that harvest 
which Christ then foresaw when he said, " I, if I be 
lifted up, will draw all men unto me." He seems to 
have been of a nature peculiarly receptive and lovely — 
a beautiful medium through whom the Christ-spirit, 
could reveal itself. If he had been in Jerusalem at the 
time of Christ's death, and witnessed the scenes of 
Calvary, . we may well believe what a fervor was en- 
kindled in his soul, and with" what zeal he devoted 
himself to him. His activity was not confined to the 
temporal ministrations which were committed to him. 
He is described as " full of faith and power, and doing 
great miracles." He maintained the cause of Jesus in 
word as well as deed. Certain leaders in a Jewish 
synagogue, of Greek extraction like himself, who still 
clung to Jewish prejudices, disputed with him, and we 
are told they were not able to resist the wisdom and 
power with which he spoke. A tumult was stirred up, 
and Stephen was brought before the Sanhedrim, and 
stood in the place where his Master had stood before 
him. Again, as before, it was the Jewish national 
pride and bitterness that were arrayed against him. 
Stephen had shown the glories of that new spiritual 
kingdom which Christ was bringing in, where there 
should be neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, 
bond nor free, but Christ should be all in all. So the 
accusation was formulated against him : 

" We have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this 
place and shall change the customs which Moses delivered unto us.' 1 

The High Priest probably felt that now he had got 



304 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

a leading Christian at advantage. He would meet 
now and expose this sect that threatened to over- 
throw their country and destroy their venerable re- 
ligion. He said to Stephen, with a semblance of 
moderation and justice, "Are these things so?" 

There was a pause, in which Stephen seems to have 
been so filled by the vision of the glory and beauty 
of the new life which was opening before the world 
that he could not speak. It is said: 

" And all that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on him, saw 
his face as it had been the face of an angel." 

Then began that noble speech, evidently the speech 
of a Greek-born Jew, who had studied the Hebrew 
history from a different standpoint from the Rabbins. 
It is clear from the fragment of this address that it 
was designed to show, even by their past history, that 
God's dealings with his people had been irrespective 
of the temple of Jerusalem and the worship there. 
He dwelt on God's calling of Abraham, his sojourn in 
Canaan before he possessed it; of God's suffering the 
chosen race to sojourn in Egypt; of Moses, born and 
nurtured in a Gentile court, and educated in the wis- 
dom of the Egyptians. This man, who lived to the 
age of forty years as an Egyptian prince, begins to offer 
himself as a guide and teacher to his oppressed people, 
but they reject his mission with scorn. Then comes 
the scene of the appearance of Jehovah for their res- 
cue and the appointment of Moses to accomplish their 
deliverance, and he drives home the parallel between 
Moses and the rejected Jesus. 

This Moses, whom they refused, saying, " Who made 



. CHRIST'S SECOND LIFE. 305 

thee a ruler and a judge?" the same did God send to 
be a ruler and a deliverer. " This is that Moses who 
said, A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up 
unto you like unto me: him shall ye hear." He then 
shows how the Jewish nation disobeyed Moses and 
God, and turned back to the golden calf of Egypt. 
He traces their history till the time of the building of 
the temple, but adds that " the Most High dwelleth not 
in temples made with hands, as saith the prophet: 
Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool : what 
house will ye build me ? saith the Lord. Hath not my 
hand made all these things?" We may imagine the 
fervor, the energy of this brief history, the tone, the 
spirit, the flashing eye that gave point to every incident. 
It was perfectly evident what he was coming to, what 
use he was going to make of this recital — that the Jews 
were not God's favorites per se ; that they were and 
always had been an ungrateful, rebellious people; that 
God had chosen them, in spite of their sins, to be the 
unworthy guardians and receivers of a great mission for 
the whole world; that the temple was not a necessity, 
that it came late in their history, and that God himself 
had declared his superiority to it. It was easy to see 
that he was coming round to the mission of Jesus, the 
prophet whom Moses had predicted, and whom they 
had rejected as they did Moses. But there was evi- 
dently a tumult rising, and Stephen saw that he was 
about to be interrupted, and therefore, suddenly, leaving 
the narrative unfinished, he breaks forth: 

"Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do 
always resist the Holy Ghost— as your fathers did so do ye. Which 



306 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? They slew them 
which prophesied the coming of that Just One of whom ye have 
been the betrayers and murderers ; who have received the law by 
the dispensation of angels and have not kept it.'' 

These words were as coals dropping upon naphtha. 
They were cut to the heart ; they gnashed on him with 
their teeth; they raved round him as wild beasts who 
collect themselves for a deadly spring. 

" But he, full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven 
and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of 
God," 

There was something in his rapt appearance, his 
pale, upturned face and eager eyes, that caused a mo- 
ment's silence. 

In a voice of exultation and awe he said : 

" Behold ! I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing 
on the right hand of God." 

The Son of man ! — the very words that Christ had 
used when he stood before Caiaphas about fifty days 
before, when he said, " Hereafter ye shall see the Son 
of man coming in the clouds of heaven !" 

There was a frantic shriek of rage. The court 
broke up and became a blind, infuriate mob. All con- 
sideration was forgotten in the blind passion of the 
hour. Though they had no legal right to take life 
without a Roman sentence, they determined to have 
the blood of this man, cost what it might. 

They hurried him out of the city with curses and 
execrations. The executioners stripped off their outer 
garments to prepare for the butchery, and laid them 
down at the feet of a young zealot named Saul of 
Tarsus. 



CHRIST'S SECOND LIFE. 307 

There are many paintings of this scene in the gal- 
leries of Europe. We may imagine him, pale and en- 
raptured, looking up into the face of that Jesus whom 
he saw in glory, and as they threw him violently down 
he cried, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." Rising to 
his knees, wounded and bleeding, he added, " Lord, 
lay not this sin to their charge." And then, says the 
narrative, 

" He fell asleep." 

The sweetness and tenderness of this expression 
shows more than anything else how completely the 
faith of Christ had conquered death. Christians spoke 
of death simply as a sleep. And here amid the hoot- 
ings and revilings of a mob, the crash of stones and 
insult and execration, nothing could hinder Christ's 
beloved from falling asleep. At peace within, with a 
heaven of love in his soul, he pitied and prayed for 
the wretched creatures who were murdering him, and 
passed to the right hand of Jesus — the first who had 
sealed his testimony with his blood. 

Thus was sown again the first perfected seed of the 
new wheat which rose from the grave of Christ ! 
Jesus was the first whom the world ever saw praying 
with his dying breath for his murderers; and Stephen, 
who had risen to the same majesty of denunciation 
and rebuke of sin which characterized his master, was 
baptized into the same tenderness of prayer for the 
miserable mob who were howling like wild beasts 
around him. Heavenly love never shrinks from de- 
nouncing sin ; but it has a prayer for the sinner ever 



308 FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTER. 

in its breast, and the nearer it comes to the higher 
world the more it pities this lower one. 

But though the orator was crushed the cause was 
not lost. 

Jesus, standing at the right hand of God, had only 
to reach forth and touch that Saul of Tarsus who 
stood consenting to his death, and he fell down at 
his feet trembling, crying, 

" Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" 

The noble work which Stephen had begun, the 
message of universal love to Jew and Gentile, passed 
from the hands of dying Stephen to the living Paul, 
who from that hour spoke the sentiment that must be 
the animating spirit of every true lover and follower 
of the Master's footsteps : " I am crucified with Christ ; 
and now it is no more I that live, but Christ that 
liveth in me." 




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The three volumes in neat box, $4 00. 

Marvelous exhibitions of deep piety, 
sound sense, quick wit, and fervid ad- 



" Full of common-sense and a knowl- 
edge of human nature, and admirably 
adapted to meet wants in preachers 
which no other writer can so well sup- 
ply." — Watchman and Reflector. 



dress; interesting to all Christian readers 
— invaluable to the beginning preach- 
er." — Prof. H. N. Day, College Courant. 



27 Park Place, New York. 



Works Published by J. B. Ford 6° Co. 



H. W. Beecher (continued). 

Star Papers : or, Experiences of Art and Nature. New 
Edition, with many additional Papers. Uniform Edition of the 
Author's Works. I vol. i2mo. Cloth, $i 75. 



" We have nothing in the way of de- 
scriptive writing, not even the best 
sketches _ of Washington Irving, that 
exceeds in richness of imagery and per- 
spicuity of statement these ' Star Pa- 
pers.' " — Methodist Home Journal. 



"A book to be read and re-read, and 
always with a fresh sense of enjoyment.'" 
— Portland Press. 

" So full of rural life, so sparkling with 
cheerfulness, so holy in their tenderness, 
and so brave in nobility of thought." — 
Liberal Christian. 



Lectures to Young Men on Various Important Subjects. 
New Edition, with additional Lectures. Uniform Edition of 
the Author's Works. 1 vol. i2mo. Cloth, $1 50. 



markable man. They are a series of 
fearless dissertations upon every-day 
subjects, conveyed with a power of elo- 
quence and a practical illustration so 
unique as to be oftentimes startling." — 
Philadelphia Enquirer. 



" Wise and elevating in tone, pervaded 
by earnestness, and well fitted for its 
mission to improve and benefit the youth 
of the land." — Boston Common-wealth. 

" Written with all the vigor of style 
and beauty of language which character- 
ize everything from the pen of this re- 

JPleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 

New Edition, with much additional matter. Uniform Edition 
of the Author's Works. 1 vol. i2mo. Cloth, $200. 

A delightful book. The poetry and prose of Beecher's Farm and 
Garden experiences. 

" Not merely readable and instruc- I tive, but singularly fascinating in its 

I magnetic style." — Philadelphia Press. 

Norwood : or, Village Life in New England. A Novel. 
Uniform Edition of the Author's Works ; also, uniform with 
J. B. F. & Co.'s Novel Series. I vol. i2mo. Illustrated, $2 00. 



" Embodies more of the high art of 
fiction than any half dozen of the best 
novels of the best authors of the day. 
It will bear to be read and re-read as 
often as Dickens's ' Dombey ' or k David 



Copperfield.' " — A Ibany Eveningjour- 
nal. 

" The book is wholesome and delight- 
ful, to be taken up again and yet again 
with fresh pleasure." — Chicago Stand- 
ard. 



Lecture Room Talks. A Series of Familiar Discourses, on 
Themes of Christian Experience. Phonographically reported 
by T. J. Ellinwood. Uniform Edition of the Author's Works. 
I vol. i2mo. With Steel Portrait. Price, $1 75. 



" It is easy to see why the old-fash- 
ioned prayer-meeting has been replaced 
by that eager and crowded assembly 



which throngs the Plymouth Lecture 
Room each Friday evening." — New 
York Evangelist. 



27 Park Place, New York. 



4 Works Published by J. B. Ford 6° Co. 

H. W. Beecher {continued). 

The Overture of Angels, A Series of Pictures of the Angelic 
Appearances Attending the Nativity of Our Lord. A Chapter 
from the " Life of Christ." Illustrated. I vol. i2mo. $200. 

A beautiful and characteristically interesting treatment of all the 
events recorded in the Gospels as occurring about the time of the 
Nativity. Full of poetic imagery, beauty of sentiment, and vivid 
pictures of the life of the Orient in that day. 



" The style, the sentiment, and faith- 
fulness to the spirit of the Biblical record 
with which the narrative is treated are 



characteristic of its author." — Worces- 
ter {Mass.) Spy. 

" A perfect fragment." — N. Y. World. 



English and American Speeches on Politics, War, and 
various miscellaneous topics. Uniform Edition of the Author's 
Works. I vol. i2mo. In preparation. 
This will include all of the more important of Mr. Beecher's 

Speeches which have been preserved. 

Eyes and Ears : or, Thoughts as They Occur, by One Who 
Keeps his Eyes and Ears Open. New Edition. Uniform Edi- 
tion of the Author's Works. 1 vol. i2mo. Cloth. In preparation. 

Royal Truths. This is a selected gathering of papers, passages, 
illustrations, descriptions, from sermons, speeches, prayer-meeting 
discourses, writings, etc., which has had a large sale both in 
England and America. The New Edition will be enlarged by 
the addition of much new matter of interest, Uniform Edition 
of the Author's Works. I vol. i2mo. In preparation. 

Views and 'Experiences of Religious Matters. Origin- 
ally published as a second collection of religious " Star Papers, 1 ' 
these admirable and helpful articles will be added to by others, 
heretofore unpublished. Uniform Edition of the Author's 
Works. I vol. i2mo. In preparation. 



Thomas K. Beecher. 

Our Seven Churches. Eight Lectures. I vol. i6mo. Paper, 
50 cts. ; Cloth, % I 00. 
A most valuable exponent of the doctrines of the leading religious 
denominations, and a striking exhibition of the author's magnanimity 
and breadth of loving sympathy. 



" The sermons are written in a style 
at once brilliant, epigrammatic, and 
readable." — Utica Herald. 

" This little book has created con- 
siderable discussion amon^ the religious 
journals, and will be read with interest 
by all." — Phila. Ledger. 



" There is hardly a page which does 
not offer a fresh thought, a genial touch 
of humor, or a suggestion at which the 
reader's heart leaps up with grateful 
surprise that a minister belonging to a 
sect can think and speak so generously 
and nobly." — Milwatikee Sentinel. 



27 Park Place, New York. 



Works Published by J. B. Ford &* Co, 



Mrs. S. M. Davis. 
TJie Life and Times of Sir Philip Sidney. A New 

and Revised Edition, with Index, etc. Three steel plates ; Por- 
trait of Sidney ; View of Penshurst Castle ; and Fac-simile of 
Sidney's manuscript. i2mo. Silk Cloth, Beveled Boards, 
Stamped with Sidney's Coat-of-Arms in Ink and Gold, $i 50. 



" An elaborate sketch of a most inter- 
esting character." — Chicago Evening 
Journal. 



" Its binding is exquisitely chaste." — 
N.Y. World. 

u Beautifully complete in every de- 
tail." — New Haven Journal & Courier. 



Edward Eggleston. 

The Circuit Rider : A Tale of the Heroic Age. Author of 
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster ■," etc. Illustrated with over thirty 
characteristic drawings by G. G. White and Sol Eytinge. 1 vol. 
i2mo. Extra Cloth, Gilt, and Ink-Stamped Covers, $1 75. 

This story is exciting widespread interest, both as a powerful 
novel and genuine love-story, and as a graphic picture of the West in 
the adventurous days of saddle-bags and circuit-riding preachers. 



" The breezy freshness of the Western 
prairie blended with the refinements of 
literary culture. It is alive with the 
sound of rushing streams and the echoes 
of the forest, but shows a certain grace- 
ful self-possession which betrays the 
presence of the artist's power." — N. Y. 
Tribune. 



Itis his best work ; a grand story ; a 
true picture of the past and of itinerant 
life in the old times of simplicity and 
hardship."—^. Y. Methodist. 

" The best American story, and the 
most thoroughly American one, that has 
appeared for years." — Phila. Evening 
Bulletin. 



Ferdinand Fabre. 

The Abbe Tigrane, Candidate for the Papal Chair. Trans- 
lated from the French by Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon. i8mo. 
Cloth, $1.50. 



" It is a vigorous narrative, to which 
the true lover of story reading, tired of 
the sentimental novels that are filling 
our bookshelves, will turn with increas- 
ing interest. It contains not a line of 
love and conventional romance, but 



mingles the opposite passions of hate, 
anger and ambition, which are its con- 
trolling forces. It pictures men in their 
mutual struggles for power, and has 
hardly a mention of women." — Boston 
Morning Star. 



Rev. T. A. Goodwin, A.M. 

The Mode of Man's Immortality : or, The When, Where 
and How of the Future Life. Author of " The Perfect Man," 
and late Editor of "The Indiana Christian Advocate.'"' 1 vol. 
i2mo. Cloth, $1 25. 



" Certainly shows with great force the 
well-nigh insuperable difficulties attend- 
ing the common opinions of the resur- 
rection of the actual body that is placed 



in the dust, and develops quite a con- 
sistent and interesting theory in refer- 
ence to the nature of the resurrection 
life." — Zion's Herald. 



27 Park Place, New. York. 



Works Published by J. B. Ford &> Co. 



Robertson Gray. 

Brave Hearts. A Novel. By Robertson Gray (R. W. Ray- 
mond). I vol. i2mo. Illustrated. Cloth. $i 75. 

A characteristic American tale, with Illustrations by Darley, Ste- 
phens, Frank Beard, and Kendrick. 

" About as pure, breezy, and withal, " Its pictures of the strange life of 
readable a story of American life as we those early California days are simply 
have met with this long time." — Con- admirable, quite as good as anything 
gregationalist. Bret Harte has written." — Lit. World. 

Grace Greenwood. 

New Life in jH~ew Lands. Notes of Travel Across the 
American Continent, from Chicago to the Pacific and Back. 
1 vol. i2mo. $2 00. 

This is a gathered series of letters, racy, brilliant, piquant ; full of 
keen observation and pungent statement of facts, picturesque in de- 
lineation of scenes on the plains, in the mountains, and along the 
sea. 



" Grace always finds lots of things no 
one else would see ; and she has a happy 
knack of picking up the mountains and 
cities and big trees and tossing them 



across the continent right before the 
reader's eyes. It's very convenient." — 
Buffalo Express. 



Heads and Tails : Studies and Stories of Pets. Square i6mo. 
Illustrated. Extra Cloth, Beveled Boards, Elaborate Gilt and 
Ink-Stamped Sides, Gilt Edges, $2.00. 



"Grace Greenwood is gifted with a 
special knack at story-telling for young 
folks, and Heads and Tails, with its 
stories of pet birds, cats, &c, is a delight- 
ful book." — Chicago Advance. 



"We don't know where there is pleas- 
anter reading than in these stories of 
pets." — Boston Commonwealth. 



Rev. S. B. Halliday. 

Winning Souls. Sketches and Incidents During Forty Years 
of Pastoral Work. I vol. l2mo. Cloth, $1.00. 



" Full of valuable suggestions to min- 
isters in the department of active duty." 
— Methodist Recorder. 

" The book is tenderly written, and 



many of its pathetic scenes will be read 
with moistened eyes. We commend the 
book to pastors and people." — Boston 
Christian Era. 



The Little Street- Sweeper : or, Life among the Poor. 1 vol. 
i2mo. Cloth, $1.25. 



" His pages have the interest of pa- 
thetic tales, with all the eloquence of a 
genuine philanthropy appended. To 
those who have any commiseration for 
the unfortunates who constantly need 
the sympathy of Christian hearts and 
hands, this volume will carry instruc- 



tion and 
at Work. 



encouragement." — Christian 



" It is written in a sympathetic spirit, 
and will be likely to awake fresh in- 
terest in behalf of the class whose story 
it tells." — Morning Star^ 



27 Park Place, New York. 



Works Published by J. B. Ford 6° Co. 

Rossiter W. Raymond, Ph. D, 

U.S. Commissioner Mining Statistics; Preset. Am. Inst. Mining En- 
gineers ; Editor Engineering and Mining Journal; Author of 
"Mines, Mills, and Furnaces" etc., etc. 
Silver and Gold : An Account of the Mining and Metallurgical 
Industry of the United States, with reference chiefly to the 
Precious Metals. I vol. 8vo. Cloth, $3 50. 

"Valuable and exhaustive work on a I "A repository of much valuable cur- 
theme of great import to the world of rent information." — N. Y. Tribune. 
industry." — Philadelphia Inquirer. \ 

Mining Industry of the States and Territories West 
of the Rocky Mountains ; including Descriptions of Quartz, 
Placer, and Hydraulic Mining ; Amalgamation, Concentration, 
Smelting, etc. Illustrated with nearly one hundred Engravings 
and Maps, and a Colored Geological Map of the United States. 
1 vol. 8vo. Cloth, $4 50. 

" Recognized in this country and in I and interesting to a remarkable de- 
Europe as professionally authoritative | gree." — Washington Chronicle. 



Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

My Wife and I: Or, Harry Henderson's History. 
Illustrated. I vol. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75. 



A Novel. 



" A capital story, in which fashionable 
follies are shown up, fast young ladies 
weighed in the balance and found want- 
ingj and the value of true worth ex- 
hibited."— Portland A rgus. 



" Always bright, piquant, and enter- 
taining, with an occasional touch of ten- 
derness, strong because subtle, keen in 
sarcasm, full of womanly logic directed 
against unwomanly tendencies." — Bos- 
ton Journal. 



We and Our Neighbors: Or, The Records of an Unfashion- 
able Street. A Sequel to " My Wife and I." 1 vol. Illustrated 
by Alfred Fredericks. i2mo. Cloth, $1.75. 



"Mrs. Stowe's stvle is picturesque, 
piquant, with just enough vivacity and 
vim to give the romance edge, and 
throughout these delicious sketches 
of scenes, with bits of dry humor, so 
peculiar to her writings." — Pittsburgh 
Commercial. 



"Natural, sprightly, full of action and 
incident, illumined by wit, and abound- 
ing with delicate humor. The book is 
admirably illustrated, and handsomely 
bound." — Indianapolis Joui nal. 



Betty 9 s Bright Idea; and other Stories. 
Paper Covers, 30 cents. Cloth, 75 cents. 



Illustrated. i2mo. 



" The hand that penned them has not 
lost its cunning, and many a man will 
grow tender - hearted, trustful, and 
gracious as he reads these little tales.' 
Cincinnati Times. 



'* The stories are all charmingly told 
in the author's best style.' 1 } — Lutheran 
and Missionary. 



27 Park Place, New York. 



Works Published by J. B. Ford & Co. 



T. S. Verdi, A.M., M.D. 

Maternity : A Popular Treatise for Wives and Mothers. 
edition. I vol. i2mo. $2 co. 



Fifth 



This book has arisen from a want felt in the author's own practice, 
as a monitor to young wives, a guide to young mothers, and an as- 
sistant to the family physician. It deals skillfully, sensibly and deli- 
cately with the perplexities of married life, giving information which 
women must have, either in conversation with physicians or from 
such a source as this. Plain and intelligible, but without offence to 
the most fastidious taste, the style of this book must commend it to 
careful perusal. It treats of the needs, dangers, and alleviations of 
the holy duties of maternity, and gives extended, detailed instruc- 
tions for the care and medical treatment of infants and children 
throughout all the perils of early life. 



44 The author deserves great credit for 
his labor, and the book merits an ex- 
tensive circulation." — U.S. Medical and 
Surgical Journal {Chicago). 

" We hail the appearance of this work 
with true pleasure. It is dictated by a 
pure and liberal spirit, and will be a real 
boon to many a young mother." — A mer- 
ican Medical Observer {Detroit.) 



" There are few intelligent mothers 
who will^ not be benefited by reading 
and keeping by them for frequent coun- 
sel a volume so rich in valuable sug- 
gestions. With its tables, prescriptions, 
and indexes at the end, this book ought 
to do much good."— Hearth and Home. 



Mothers and Daughters : Practical Studies for the Conserva- 
tion of the Health of Girls. I vol. i2mo. ft. 50. 

" This hour's the very crisis of your fate." — Dryden. 



44 A book of hygiene, dealing especial- 
ly with the critical period of girl-life, 
and having reference to the health and 
usefulness of the future mothers of the 
land. Dedicated to his own daughter, 
the book is at once delicate, wise and 
safe." — N. Y. Evening Mail. 



"Dr. T. S. Verdi, President of the 
Board of Health of Washington, a phy- 
sician whose standing in our city should 
enforce respect for his opinions." — The 
Capital, Washington, D. C. 

"Known in Washington for years, as 
an unusually able and successful prac- 
titioner." — New York Times. 



27 



Park Place, New York. 
















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